Features
What Mary saw at Cana: The indispensability of others
At Cana, Jesus asks Mary, "What is this to me and to you?" It is very important that the church hear this question.
Drones unlimited? Just war rules demand accountability
Does the use of drones meet just war criteria? That depends on how you define your terms.
Cultivating ministers: Farminary students get their hands dirty
Princeton Theological Seminary's farm grows food. But this isn't the main point.
Unshakable in Uganda: A lesbian activist navigates church and politics
The pastor urged the congregation to sign an antigay petition. Clare Byarugaba knew she wasn't the only gay person there.
Wrist-deep in the earth: Notes from the farm
We invest each seed and young plant with the exuberant yet completely rational hope of compounded returns.
Books
Morality transformed
The delight I felt while reading this book needs further interrogation, because its stories deal with troublesome subjects.
Buechner 101, by Frederick Buechner
This collection offers a rich range of life-giving words from a beloved theologian-novelist-preacher-speaker-essayist and encourager.
America’s War for the Greater Middle East, by Andrew J. Bacevich
Bacevich provides another case of the fraught dream of managing history that Reinhold Niebuhr critiqued.
Faith, learning, and scandal
Baylor transformed itself from a regional Baptist teaching institution into an internationally recognized Protestant research university—but not without scandal.
Know the world, know yourself
Nature reveals itself as ruptured, as already profaned. To rest into a landscape is to be drawn into an adulterated history.
Redemption revisited
Faith is formed in us by the Spirit and the life of the church. It renews our elemental confidence and creates our disposition toward the world.
Departments
Need thy neighbor
As I drive past boarded-up churches, I am more convinced than ever that many congregations could afford to revisit their neighbor ethic.
Happy Down, Who’s Prayin’ for Me? (top), Stephen’s Small Loveable, and Kalashnikov II, by Roz Dimon
New York artist Roz Dimon works by layering one digital image over another, the layers differing in opacity and texture. For the series “Guns,” she worked with a digital archive of guns used in killings in the United States....
Politics into poetry
Need a book to replenish your political and spiritual imagination this election season? I recommend Adrienne Rich's Collected Poems.
New country, new faith
Over the past five years, migrants and refugees have flowed into Europe in unprecedented numbers. Some are converting to Christianity.
Saving Annville
Preacher has enough violence to satisfy a small planet of adolescent boys. It also has church budget meetings.
True witness, absurd violence
Pope Francis’s response to the killing of a French priest puzzled some. But it pointed to the true nature of Christian witness.
News
Zanzibar historic cathedral restored, featuring center on slave-trade heritage
The land just outside the narrow streets and corridors of Stone Town, Zanzibar, where Christ Church Anglican Cathedral was built, was once a slave market....
American Bible Society looks back, ahead
As the American Bible Society marks its 200th anniversary, and after a series of leadership changes and a recent move to Philadelphia, its leaders are looking to the nation’s past in planning for the future....
Anglican Church of Canada takes step toward allowing same-sex weddings
In the first step of a two-step process, Canada’s Anglican Church voted to amend its rules to allow clergy to celebrate same-sex marriages....
Mohammad El Halabi, World Vision manager, charged with diverting funds to Hamas
Israeli security officials have charged Mohammad El Halabi, the operations manager in Gaza for World Vision, with funneling tens of millions of dollars in donations to Hamas’s military wing....
Duncan Gray Jr., Episcopal civil rights leader, dies at 89
Duncan Montgomery Gray Jr., an Episcopal priest who took risky stands for integration and endured a beating for the cause, died at age 89 at his home in Jackson on July 15, according to the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi....
Ibtihaj Muhammad becomes first U.S. Olympian wearing a hijab
Ibtihaj Muhammad, a 30-year-old fencer, made history in Rio de Janeiro as the first U.S. Olympian to compete in a hijab....
Rare biblical mosaics uncovered in ancient Galilee synagogue
Unusual mosaics depicting biblical scenes—one of Noah’s ark, the other of the parting of the Red Sea—were uncovered this summer by archaeologists excavating a fifth-century synagogue at Huqoq, an ancient Jewish village near the Sea of Galilee....
Party conventions reveal new lines in culture wars
Since the late 1970s, the political battle lines in the culture wars have been clearly drawn and easily understood....
Lectionary
September 18, 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Amos 8:4-7; Psalm 113; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13
What is Jesus thinking when he tells the parable of the dishonest steward?
September 11, 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Exodus 32:7-14; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10
James calls Abraham a “friend of God.” In this week’s reading from Exodus, Moses presumes upon a similar divine friendship to offer God advice.