Features
What is good? Joy and the well-lived life
"Look at the birds of the air," said Jesus. Our lives are more akin to the frantic scurrying of rats and the disciplined marching of ants.
In any need or trouble
The prayers of the people call us. When we answer, we invite the possibility that it is we who will be poor, hungry, sick, and in prison.
Mistake: Essays by readers
In response to our request for essays on the topic mistake, we received many compelling reflections. Here is a selection.
Three crucial years: A thousand days of child nutrition
Around the world, apples have become a symbol of good health. And around the world, lots of people can't afford them.
God(s) of Abraham: Sibling rivalry among three faiths
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are connected as older and younger siblings. It's an asymmetrical relationship.
Books
What is the Christian century?
The unexpected Christian century has produced a global body of Christ that challenges as well as enriches Christians.
Vibrant, vigorous, and weird
Almost any page of this collection yields the precise puzzling haunting music of Dillard’s mind at work.
she: robed and wordless, by Lou Ella Hickman
This slim volume of poetry gives voice to the women of the Bible, named and unnamed.
Cradled by God
What's the biblical God's essential characteristic? According to Cobb, it's the loving care a mother or father gives an infant.
Hope without Optimism, by Terry Eagleton
This provocative book portrays hope as a virtue, a moral orientation that can be cultivated actively, a matter of will.
Moral constructions of HIV
Once gay men were identified in public as the primary victims of and imagined cause of the disease, it became a moral crisis rather than a medical one.
Departments
Real people’s mistakes
My friend the public defense attorney doesn't teach her clients to evade error. She helps them acknowledge it—and stop pretending.
Unremembered
In the midst of a procession of well-known stories is an image marking what's been forgotten. That's most of history, isn't it?
Gate of Passage, by Lisa Ross
New York artist Lisa Ross photographs landscapes and the objects that inhabit them....
Heritage or hate?
How do you commemorate Christian suffering without reawakening ancient hatred?
Redeeming lemons
Lemonade is a spectacular piece of visual theology. It offers hope for healing—not a generic healing, but the healing of black, female bodies.
Guns made for slaughter
An assault weapons ban wouldn't end violence or hate—but it would reduce the body count.
News
Pauli Murray, first black woman Episcopal priest, honored by Yale
A new residential college under construction at Yale University will be named for Anna Pauline Murray, a co-founder of the National Organization for Women who was the first African-American woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest....
German trombone choirs give churches a boost: Music gives German church a boost
(The Christian Science Monitor) On a recent Monday evening, tourists and locals dining at restaurants next to Leipzig’s St....
Jackson Nasoore Ole Sapit elected Kenya Anglican archbishop, succeeds former GAFCON chair Eliud Wabukala
Jackson Nasoore Ole Sapit, a traditionalist Anglican bishop who nonetheless steered clear of sexuality issues, has been elected the new archbishop of Kenya and is being installed on July 3....
South Carolina AME churches keep extending welcome a year after massacre
A few weeks after a young white gunman killed nine people at a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, another young white man walked into a Bible study at another AME church in South Carolina....
Cathedral to remove glass Confederate flags
The Washington National Cathedral will replace depictions of the Confederate flag in its stained-glass windows with plain glass but maintain adjoining panes honoring Confederate generals for at least two years while it fosters discussions about ...
California assisted-dying law takes effect, health-care providers respond
Somewhere in California on June 9, a terminally ill person may have lifted a glass and consumed a lethal slurry of pulverized prescription pills dissolved in water....
Baptist church efforts bridge racial divisions across denominations
Pastors Frederick Haynes and George Mason both lead Baptist churches in Dallas, but they did not meet until the not-guilty verdict in the death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin brought them together in 2013....
Iran bans pilgrims from hajj, citing safety concerns
(The Christian Science Monitor) Iranian authorities will not allow the nation’s pilgrims to participate in the hajj to Mecca in September, accusing Saudi Arabia of making in...
Lectionary
July 24, 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Genesis 18:20-32; Luke 11:1-13
What is the point of prayer? The question is writ large in the texts from both the Hebrew scripture and the Gospel for this Sunday. The terrain is fraught with places to trip and fall.
July 17, 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Genesis 18:1-10a; Luke 10:38-42
God’s experience of hospitality—in the mysterious travelers and in the person of Jesus—inspires us to think beyond an Abraham-vs.-Sarah or Martha-vs.-Mary divide.