Features
Guerrilla disability rock: Sloan Meek and his music
When Sloan Meek sings, it's not like any singing you've ever heard. It's more like a moan that roughly captures the melody's dynamic movement.
Choices and lives: The changing politics of abortion
There has been a broad and dramatic shift toward more abortion restrictions in the United States. This will almost certainly continue.
Not yet spring: Notes from the farm
It's been too long since Christmas, and most folks wish the winter were over. But this lingering not-yet-spring is a precious time.
Books
Faith and Wisdom in Science, by Tom McLeish
Why do scientists turn to questions traditionally reserved for the humanities? Tom McLeish argues for a deep kinship between the two spheres.
The Thiselton Companion to Christian Theology, by Anthony C. Thiselton
This doorstop of a reference book was written entirely by Thiselton, professor emeritus of Christian theology at the University of Nottingham....
Holy terror
Secularists from Voltaire to Richard Dawkins have attacked religion for its connection to violence. Karen Armstrong flatly rejects the idea.
Social and Economic Life in Second Temple Judea, by Samuel L. Adams
Samuel Adams's book is important on two counts: he focuses on the once-neglected period of the Second Temple, and he asks economic questions rather than theological-spiritual ones.
Boswell’s Enlightenment, by Robert Zaretsky
James Boswell, best known as Samuel Johnson’s biographer, was a lifelong seeker of truth....
Unjustifiable acts
More religious people support torture under Obama than they did under Bush. In this context, Rebecca Gordon's book is required reading.
The New Evangelical Social Engagement, edited by Brian Steensland and Philip Goff
Brian Steensland and Philip Goff's valuable anthology addresses a topic that usually flies under the media's radar: "new" evangelicals' progressive social engagement.
Departments
Doubting Thomas, by Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi da, 1571–1610)
Caravaggio’s painting depicts the story of the apostle’s incredulity the way most of us remember it, but not exactly the way it is presented in John 20:27–28. In the narrative Jesus invites Thomas to “put your finger here and see my hands....
Still targeted
Is anti-Semitism on the rise? It's hard to quantify, and data vary across regions. But a vicious anti-Semitism persists in Europe and the Middle East.
Reason for hope
A friend recently announced that he had given up hope for the human race. There are days when I find myself thinking about this a lot.
Going smaller and deeper
When Jeff Richards paints a picture of church in downtown Sacramento, the church doesn't tower over the other buildings. It inhabits them.
Dementia and resurrection
Perhaps it's only when we let go of who and what our loved one was that we can receive who they are now.
Transparent need
A TV show can present a minority group as "respectable" or as people who are as screwed up as anyone else. Transparent goes with option two.
News
Studying faith and hope in the face of death
After the recent death of 26-year-old aid worker Kayla Mueller of Prescott, Arizona, who was held captive for months by the so-called Islamic State, her parents released a brief, handwritten letter she had sent to her family....
Malcolm Boyd, Episcopal priest and gay Christian pioneer, dies at 91
Malcolm Boyd, an Episcopal priest and pioneer among gay Christians, died February 27 at the age of 91....
Theodore Hesburgh, longtime Notre Dame president, dies at 97
Theodore Hesburgh, the longtime president of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, died February 26 at age 97.
For more than 50 years, he engaged issues such as civil rights, nuclear weapons, and abortion....
Fred B. Craddock, preeminent preacher, dies at age 86
Fred B. Craddock, a preeminent teacher and practitioner of preaching, died March 6 at age 86 in Blue Ridge, Georgia. He had been ill with Parkinson’s disease....
Assyrian Christians face attacks from Islamic State
(The Christian Science Monitor) Assyrian Christians who live in Syria and Iraq have faced religious persecution for much of their modern history....
Assyrian Christians form battalion to combat ISIS
Assyrian Christians in the Nineveh plains, with the help of a group of Americans, are building a battalion to combat the so-called Islamic State....
Christians, Muslims persecuted in Myanmar
Despite democratic reforms and international pressure that have pushed Myanmar to improve its human rights record in recent years, religious freedom remains heavily constrained across the country....
Religious noise pollution in a Buddhist culture
While Myanmar’s strict curbs on religious freedom continue to draw international scrutiny, its lax enforcement of noise limits is attracting the ire of locals....
Episcopal Church examines policies on alcohol abuse after bishop’s DUI crash
Episcopal Church clergy and laypeople alike are rereading church policy on alcohol and the consecration of bishops after a fatal December crash in Baltimore in which a bishop drove while drunk....
African church leaders oppose female genital mutilation in hospitals
International rights groups, churches, and activists are escalating campaigns against female genital mutilation now that girls are checking into hospitals to have the procedure....
Lectionary
April 12, 2015, Second Sunday of Easter (John 20:19-31)
Thomas knows Jesus as incarnate. He cannot easily make the leap to Jesus’ new condition. It’s easier for us, because we consider the story in a different order.
April 5, 2015, Easter Sunday: Mark 16:1-8
If it hadn't been for the snakes, I might have let the reader continue. Instead I went to the lectern and quietly said, "we are stopping at verse 8 today."