Features
Gentle touches
Spent all day and deep into the evening Saturday at a wedding, studying the ways and means and manners by which people gently touch each other, and so communicate this and that and the other thing.
Black Lives Matter
BLM is writing a new chapter in the history of black people's struggle for full equality. What are the implications for churches?
The church's respectability politics: Black Lives Matter symposium
The young people leading this movement have heard enough about Martin Luther King's dream. It is not enough for church leaders to reply that they don't know much history.
Children at the grave: Making space for grief
For career day at my daughter's school, I brought pictures of some of the things pastors do. The students were mostly interested in the funerals.
Black love of black people: Black Lives Matter symposium
White Christians have to decide: will we show up and act for racial transformation, or will we sit idly by? But BLM isn't waiting to see what our verdict will be.
Jesus of the resistance: Black Lives Matter symposium
The BLM movement has issued a clarion call to the church, the black church in particular, to affirm a theology of resistance, not respectability. This means reckoning with who Jesus is.
Full humanity: Black Lives Matter symposium
In the civil rights movement, language of political participation was central. BLM activists are making a more profound demand.
Healing from the ground up: The church as field hospital
The church I dream of goes out onto the field of battle—not to kill and maim on either side's behalf, but to bind up wounds.
The language of liberation: Black Lives Matter symposium
Disaster is understandable for black lives—they are antagonists in a narrative of humanity written to serve white supremacy. To say "black lives matter" is to interrupt this story.
Books
The science of injustice
The Enlightenment view of autonomous human subjects is built into the law, so the criminal justice system floats on myths and superstitions.
Hermeneutics in a fragile land
The history of Palestinian Christian interpretation of the Old Testament reminds us of the nuanced, fragile nature of life in that region.
The complex, beautiful history of science
Microscopes reveal countless worlds inside the world, from cells to tiny structures within cells diligently performing mysterious tasks.
God Mocks, by Terry Lindvall
Although the title refers to divine mocking, this volume focuses primarily on the ways people mock one another around religious beliefs and practices....
Fear and trauma in immigration policy
U.S. immigration policy has long used the imposition of trauma and the dynamics of fear as weapons.
The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air, by Søren Kierkegaard and Bruce H. Kirmmse
Kirmmse’s new translation of Kierkegaard’s homiletical reflections on Matthew 6:24–34 captures the sermons’ beauty and gravitas....
Departments
Who matters to us?
Moral concern usually begins when one person makes an effort to become, in some measure, one with the other. Privilege impedes this.
Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water); detail from Lamentation for the Forsaken
Coexist House in London has organized a citywide Stations of the Cross exhibition. Viewers travel to 14 different locations throughout the city to see works by Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and atheist artists....
Within the cross
At the least-visited museum in Rome, a marble cross caught my attention. It depicts the Madonna and Child and the warm tangle of their intimacy.
Christians in the Gulf
The Gulf states do not practice religious freedom in anything like the Western sense. Still, Christianity has secured a surprisingly strong foothold.
Beyond the heavens
Last month, both the scientifically minded and the scientifically challenged paused to contemplate the far reaches of the cosmos.
Real intimacy
This year, the Oscars honored three films that are poignant meditations on a person's agency in falling and staying in love.
News
With new pastor in place, Emanuel AME continues on its 'mission of hope'
Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, has welcomed a new pastor as the congregation’s work for justice continues....
Cornish Rogers, professor of ecumenism and former Century editor, dies at 86
Cornish R. Rogers, a professor and a former editor of the Christian Century, died February 5 at age 86....
In Mexico, pope’s visit underscores perilous life of priests
(The Christian Science Monitor) Pope Francis’s message against organized crime was potent in a country where more than 100,000 people have been killed in drug wars since 2006 and wher...
Pope and patriarch enter 'shared labor'
After two years of secret talks aimed at healing ties broken during the Great Schism of 1054, Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, met in Cuba....
Henry VIII's royal chapel hosts Catholic vespers for first time in 450 years
For the first time in 450 years, a citadel of Protestant worship in England—the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court Palace in Canterbury—echoed to the sound of Roman Catholic prayers and music....
Wendell and Mary Berry bequest farming legacy to small Catholic college
The family of writer and farmer Wendell Berry has lived among the hay fields and rolling knobs of central Kentucky for nine generations. Now, the 81-year-old writer wants to pass on his farming legacy....
China imprisons pastors of prominent churches as crackdown goes on
(The Christian Science Monitor) Two prominent Chinese Protestant pastors were arrested as part of what appears to be the toughest crackdown on civil society since Mao Zedong’s Cultura...
Israeli religious settlers grapple with charges of inciting extremism
At the hilltop outpost of Esh Kodesh the only sound for miles around is of a dog barking or a rooster crowing....
Lectionary
April 3, Second Sunday of Easter: John 20:19-31
To ask a question is to risk an answer. Sometimes we don’t like the answer we receive. In Thomas’s case, though, the real risk is in success.
March 27, Easter Sunday: 1 Corinthians 15:19-26; Luke 24:1-12
Luke grounds the resurrection narrative in tangible details: the rock-hewn tomb, the linen cloth, the heavy stone, the fragrant spices. The reader can imagine the place and time. Then things fall off the map.
March 25, Good Friday: John 18:1-19:42
There are many reasons to deny Jesus, and we all have one.
March 24, Maundy Thursday: Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14; John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Slaughtering animals, washing feet—I can smell the rooms in both Exodus and John.