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March 25, 2020

Volume 137, Issue #7

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Features

First Person

The strange, humbling ritual of foot washing

It makes me uncomfortable. That’s by design.

by Amy Frykholm

Interviews

Bringing forth Lazarus from a blank canvas

“Life is built, and then it stops, and then Christ reaches in and brings it forward again.”

Jessica Hooten Wilson interviews Ross Wilson

First Person

Four years after my mother died, we still haven’t scattered her ashes

They’re in a plastic bag in my closet.

by Heidi Haverkamp

Youth ministry isn’t about fun

How one youth leader stopped being a chief counselor of fun and discovered something better.

by Andrew Root

Books

Is social justice the new reformation?

Anna Madsen’s theological call for taking a stand

by B. Parker Haynes

An anthropologist explores the dangers of being pregnant while black

Using case studies, Dána-Ain Davis shows how medical racism hurts black women.

by Justin List

A precise, devastating portrayal of white wokeness

Kiley Reid’s novel about race, class, and good intentions that miss the point

by Rachel Pyle

John Henry Newman’s impact

Eamon Duffy’s short biography of the first English saint canonized since the Reformation

by Thomas Albert Howard

Departments

First Words

Death and the grace of “it is finished”

At a recent funeral, some churchgoers were surprised by my choice of texts.

by Peter W. Marty

On Art

Study for MYDHA and Study for SYAH, by Tobi Kahn

Tobi Kahn is fascinated by the edges of abstraction. The surfaces of his paintings swell with forms that can appear both macrocosmic and microcosmic, as if depicting the contours of a distant nebula or a cell dividing under a microscope....

art selection and comment by Aaron Rosen

Screen Time

Honeyland transcends language and location

A Macedonian beekeeper’s ordinary, mythical life

by Kathryn Reklis

Faith Matters

Following the suffering Christ

Discipleship-as-self-improvement doesn’t much resemble the way of Jesus.

by Debra Dean Murphy

From the Editors

L’Arche’s values of accompaniment, vulnerability, and mutuality are bigger than Jean Vanier

Such values have shadow sides. They are also desperately needed in the world.

News

People

Honduran woman who sought sanctuary in a church will not be deported

For nearly two years Rosa del Carmen Ortez-Cruz took sanctuary from deportation at the Church of Reconciliation, not knowing if she would ever be able to emerge from her confinement....

by Yonat Shimron

People

Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore faces investigation for anti-Trump comments

The Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee will launch a task force to examine the activities of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the convention’s public policy organization headed by theologian and author Russell Moor...

by Bob Smietana

Death toll rises in Delhi anti-Muslim riots

At least 24 people were killed and 189 injured in three days of clashes in New Delhi that coincided with President Donald Trump’s first state visit to India, with the death toll expected to rise as hospitals continue to take in the wounded, author...

By Sheikh Saaliq and Emily Schmall

UMC theological e-Academy is ‘game changer’ in Eastern Africa

United Methodist theological colleges in East Africa now can deliver education at a distance....

by Gad Maiga

Bernie Sanders visits prominent black church before Super Tuesday

In a visit to one of North Carolina’s most prominent African American churches, Sen. Bernie Sanders scored big points talking about poverty in the United States....

by Yonat Shimron

Supreme Court to hear dispute between Catholic nonprofit, same-sex foster parents

On February 24, the Supreme Court said it will hear a dispute over a Philadelphia Catholic agency that won’t place foster children with same-sex couples, a big test of religious rights under a more conservative court....

by Mark Sherman

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