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November 18, 2020

Volume 137, Issue #24
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Features

How My Mind Has Changed

My mind and what she remembers

When I can't figure out what something means, I give the problem to my mind.

by Marilynne Robinson

Interviews

The Black Church Food Security Network aims to heal the land and heal the soul

“Food charity is a sweet siren song. It is not a sustainable track toward the Beloved Community.”

Amy Frykholm interviews Heber Brown III

Whose problem is clergy burnout?

Training in healthy ministry for pastors—and congregations

by Tracey Dawson

The Porter’s Gate’s songs give voice to the realities of 2020

A collective of Black, White, and Latino church songwriters makes liturgical music for resistance.

by Amy L. Sherman

riot police in a line
Opinion

Why I’m not participating in this weekend’s Faith and Blue event for churches and police

The problem isn’t police-community relations. It’s our acceptance of a broken system.

by Melissa Florer-Bixler

Books

Shattering the myth of the first Thanksgiving

The Wampanoags shared the gifts of the land. The colonists responded with greed and ingratitude.

by Jane McBride

Ted Kooser’s poetry of the Great Plains resonates across the world

The beloved American poet lifts the everyday into the realm of the transcendent.

by James Crews

Reparations would help close the staggering racial wealth gap

William Darity and Kirsten Mullen make the case for finally addressing a great wrong.

by Walter Brueggemann

For Valarie Kaur, love is sweet labor

A memoir of an activist whose life is grounded in Sikh mysticism

by Katherine Willis Pershey

Departments

The fascinating story of the Ivory Coast’s mega-basilica

Why is the world’s largest church building in Yamoussoukro?

by Philip Jenkins

First Words

The privilege of opting out

And the Christian calling to opt back in

by Peter W. Marty

On Art

Refugees Welcome | I See My Neighbors | Everyone Is Welcome Here, by Micah Bazant

Signs of welcome, hope, and refuge—that’s what Jewish trans artist Micah Bazant creates: posters and images for public spaces that make a claim on them as welcoming....

art selection and comment by Lil Copan

Faith Matters

A tent for outdoor worship

The stark liturgical space that Harvard Episcopal chaplain Rita Powell envisioned before COVID is now a reality.

by Stephanie Paulsell

From the Editors

Trump’s refugee policy is a miserable moral failure

So is our nation’s long history of choosing economic success over global equity, safety, and wellbeing.

News

Nigerian Christian leaders respond to police brutality protests

After a video of an officer killing a man was released in early October, thousands of Nigerians have taken to the streets to protest decades of police brutality in the country....

by Patrick Egwu

Plot thickens over origins of pope’s civil union endorsement

In mid-October, questions swirled about the origins of Pope Francis’s bombshell comments endorsing same-sex civil unions, with all evidence suggesting he made them in a 2019 interview that was never broadcast in its entirety....

by Nicole Winfield

Could the next American Girl doll be a refugee?

As an American child growing up in Belgium and France, Laura Laurie mostly learned about American history from the popular American Girl books....

by Emily McFarlan Miller

Iliff School of Theology reckons with grisly past

For 80 years, a book about Christianity bound in the tanned skin of a murdered Lenape Indian was displayed in a glass case outside the library at the Iliff School of Theology, a United Methodist seminary in Denver, Colorado....

by Jim Patterson

Some Hindus question anti-caste policy at Brandeis University

Last December, when Brandeis Uni­versity announced a first-of-its-kind policy banning discrimination based on caste, administrators hoped other institutions would follow suit and adopt similar policies of their own....

by G. Jeffrey MacDonald

People

Wilton Gregory to become first Black American cardinal in Catholic Church

Washington, DC, archbishop Wilton Gregory is set to become the first Black American cardinal in the Catholic Church, a historic appointment that comes months after nationwide demonstrations against racial injustice....

by Elana Schor

People

Nuns on the Bus founder Simone Campbell announces retirement

Simone Campbell, the Roman Catholic sister made famous by her Nuns on the Bus tours and her support for the Af­fordable Care Act, announced on Oc­to­ber 20 that she will step down early next year as head of Network, the influential social justice ...

by Jack Jenkins

People

Evangelist Ravi Zacha­rias posthumously accused of sexual abuse

Christianity Today magazine reported that three women who worked as massage therapists at spas co-owned by the late Christian evan­gelist Ravi Zacha­rias claimed that he repeatedly masturbated and ex­posed himself during massage sessions and made ...

by Bob Smietana

Lectionary

December 6, Advent 2B (Mark 1:1-8)

Advent calls us to take the myths of Christianity seriously.

by Julia Seymour

November 29, Advent 1B (Mark 13:24-37)

In Advent, we expect the unexpected.

by Julia Seymour

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