Features
Horror and empathy: My response to a gory Passion play
Is exaggerated violence in Passion plays merely a product of our baser
natures? Or does the savagery actually have a proper place in the
crucifixion's meaning?
Faithful reinvention: Ministry in the 21st century
"Religious commitments are no longer taken for granted as part of North American people's lives," says Scott Kershner of Holden Village, a Lutheran retreat center in Washington State. "So space opens up to ask very basic and interesting questions."
Cell groups: Inmates and seminarians study together
Vanderbilt was not the first school to offer theological education in a prison. But it did pioneer the approach of having seminarians learn in company with prisoners.
Family affair: Rich Melheim on how faith is formed
"Parents are the most important faith guides, mentors and
teachers a kid will ever have."
Pretending the Bible: A children's ministry of play
The children from our church walked into the synagogue quietly. But
when the rabbi invited them to look at the ark containing the Torah scroll, they lost all reserve.
The Amazon loophole: States seek to collect online sales tax
We need states to take in enough revenue to provide the services people rely on. We need this more than we need tax-free online shopping.
Carnage
Carnage plays out entirely in a New York City apartment, where
two couples are trying to deal with a playground incident involving
their 11-year-old sons, one of whom struck the other in the mouth with a
stick. In the process, the film—directed and coscripted by Roman
Polanski, based on Yasmina Reza's play God of Carnage—peels back the skin of each supposedly caring parent, revealing the person beneath the civilized facade.
We Need to Talk About Kevin
The primary reason to immerse yourself in the jagged world of We Need to Talk About Kevin
is the towering lead performance by Tilda Swinton, an actress of
continuing spontaneity who traveled a circuitous route through
experimental and art cinema before embarking on a second career in the
mainstream.
Books
Witness to an Extreme Century, by Robert Jay Lifton
Near the end of his memoir, Robert Lifton writes about Victor T., a Jewish doctor who had been an inmate at Auschwitz....
Oprah, by Kathryn Lofton
Until I read Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon, I would not have said that I was a connoisseur of the world of O.
A Public Faith, by Miroslav Volf
Of the rewriting Christ and Culture there
shall be no end. Miroslav Volf is too sophisticated a theologian to
rehash or imitate H. Richard Niebuhr's celebrated fivefold schema, but A Public Faith remains in the shadow of Niebuhr's defining work.
Bound and free
Paul Harvey's introduction to the history of African-American Christianity emphasizes both the
fraught relationship between black and white Christians and the tensions
within black religious institutions and communities.
Departments
Muslims and Barnabas
Any Christian who travels in Muslim countries or on the frontier between the faiths may well encounter the Gospel of Barnabas and be asked to respond to its claims.
Answering yes
One of our tradition's best ideas is that God calls us to become all we were created to be. One of its worst is that only clergy are called.
Della Francesca 1475—2011
Wes Sherman's abstract work, inspired in part by Olivier Messiaen's La Nativité du Seigneur (The Nativity of the Lord), is on exhibit at Grace Church in Newark, New Jersey....
The memory of God
We can't remember Jesus the way we can remember, say, Bonhoeffer or the lavishly photographed St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
Reasonable exception
We disagree with the Catholic bishops' stance on birth control. Nevertheless, we think HHS should offer a broader religious exemption.
News
Breakaway Presbyterians launch new church body
Conservative Presbyterians have formed an alternative to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), which they say is too consumed by internal conflicts and bureaucracy to nurture healthy congregations....
Stem cell results labeled meager, immoral
A Southern Baptist seminary president has termed findings that embryonic stem cell treatments might have improved the vision of two blind patients "downright ominous."...
Is ‘compassionate conservatism’ obsolete?
The Republican presidential candidates competing for the affections of
Florida voters have plenty of labels with which to tar each other:
Influence peddler. Failed politician. Cayman Islands account holder.
Aspiring polygamist.
Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists rebut Santorum: ‘Equality’ is their concept, too
Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus are accusing Republican presidential
candidate Rick Santorum of bigotry and ignorance after he said that
equality is solely a Judeo-Christian concept....
Recalling U.S. missionary beginnings
When America's first ordained foreign missionaries sailed from
Massachusetts toward India 200 years ago, they launched a movement to
spread the faith and created America's most potent export: Christianity....
Documentary on gay bishop featured at Sundance
It's been years since the incident, but Bishop V. Gene Robinson's
heart still races when he sees it on film. Robinson, the Episcopal
Church's first openly gay bishop, was preaching in London when a man in...
Desecration of the dead defies religious teachings
The outrage over a video allegedly showing U.S. marines urinating on
dead Taliban fighters provided Americans with a disturbing reminder that
war can reduce men to revenge-seeking brutality that defies human
norms....
Big-city mayors come out for same-sex marriage
A bipartisan coalition of 80 U.S. mayors has started a "Freedom to
Marry" campaign to build public support for giving same-sex couples the
right to marry under U.S. and state laws....
Lectionary
Sunday, March 4, 2012 (Mark 8:31-38)
I can't fool myself into believing that I've gotten close to the kind of costly discipleship that Jesus is speaking of in Mark 8.
Sunday, February 26, 2012: Mark 1:9–15
What can we possibly find in Mark's terse temptation account to help us in our wilderness wanderings?