Features
A new relationship: Church and state in Sweden
On January 1 the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden began a new era of independence from the Swedish government. Though the new arrangement is far from realizing an American-style separation of church and state, the enactment of this reform represents an important new step in a long process of changing relations between state and church in Sweden. The significance of the recent moves can be understood only in light of Sweden’s rather complicated church-state tradition.
Re-traditioning: Letter from Kenya
Standing on a dusty Nairobi roundabout amid exhaust fumes and blaring horns, several hundred young men raise their hands north to the unseen shrine of Kerinyaga, or Mount Kenya—the second-highest mountain in Africa and mythological birthplace of the Kikuyu, Kenya’s largest tribe.
God talk and congregational song: An interview with Brian Wren: A hymn writer's convictions
When I first went to church, when I was about 15, I found myself in a hymn-singing tradition. When I began to write hymns in the 1960s it was natural for me to follow that tradition. I think that a congregational song, or a hymn—which is a lyric that develops a theme or tells a story which unfolds over more than two or three stanzas—can be in any kind of musical style.
Books
Men without women: An African-American crisis
Blood Rituals: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries, by Orlando Patterson...
Making sense of our lives
Feminist and Womanist Pastoral Theology, edited by Bonnie Miller-McLemore and Brita Gill-Austern...
Einstein and Religion, by Max Jammer
As a symbol of scientific genius, Albert Einstein the public icon has had as great an effect on 20th-century thought as his theories have had on modern science....
Departments
Development woes: Shame and blame in the global economy
The protesters who came to Washington, D.C., in April to rally against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund prophetically denounced global inequities and defended the cause of the poor....
Used books
While I was visiting Fort Worth, Texas, recently, I walked into a used bookstore on North 8th Street—the kind of place where you can fall into a time warp, forgetting where you are until you hear the owner locking up for the day....