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July 28, 2021

Volume 138, Issue #15
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Features

On her deathbed, St. Clare of Assisi blessed God

Her radical final words confounded me for years.

by Wendy Murray

How My Mind Has Changed

How I changed my mind about same-sex marriage

It began when I realized the church has always had a process for changing its mind.

by Francis Spufford

First Person

Birthing you is an act of radical hope

Accepting the call to Black motherhood without averting my eyes from the spectacle of Black death

by Jennifer Bailey

Reflection

Has the pandemic prepared us for pilgrimages?

We’re hungrier than ever for physicality, place, and embodiment.

by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson

Reflection

The Pope Francis of India?

Bishop Philipose Mar Chrysostom worked with unlikely partners—including communist leaders in Kerala—to bring about social change.

by Jesudas M. Athyal

Books

A landscape scarred by the trauma of eugenics

Elizabeth Catte traces the haunting history of forced sterilizations in Central Virginia.

by Chris Hammer

A Palestinian evangelical’s supersessionism

Munther Isaac’s critique of the Israeli government is perfectly fair. But why does he also need to critique Judaism?

by John E. Phelan Jr.

How do parents pass along their faith to children?

Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk’s sociological study offers some clues.

by Emily Soloff

The good news in John Green’s reviews of Diet Dr Pepper and sunsets

He says they’re memoirs, but I’m onto him. The Anthropocene Reviewed is more like a collection of sermons.

by Katherine Willis Pershey

Departments

In Mediterranean Europe, St. Benedict the Moor is back

The Afropean saint is reemerging amid a swelling African diaspora.

by Philip Jenkins

On Art

Gate, by Maxim Demin

Many artists work with different paints or printmaking materials, but the background Maxim Demin brings to art making—he also does icon restoration—expands his level of experimentation to forms, formats, and the rich historical study of art throug...

art selection and comment by Lil Copan

First Words

God at the center

A priority is singular. It’s hard to have more than one.

by Peter W. Marty

Faith Matters

My first post-pandemic flight was a bumpy ride

I murmured my prayers, counted my breaths, and got through it.

by Stephanie Paulsell

From the Editors

Ending food insecurity will take more than community fridges

It’s beautiful when people come together to protect their hungry neighbors. It’s appalling that they have to.

News

A Florida Jewish community begins burying its dead after condo collapse

As the search for missing people trapped in the rubble of a Surfside, Florida, condo building continued in late June, the town’s large Jewish community began burying its first victims....

by Yonat Shimron

Evangelical Covenant Church rebukes doctrine of discovery at annual meeting

The Evangelical Covenant Church became the latest Protestant denomination in the United States to repudiate the doctrine of discovery, the theological justification that allowed the discovery and domination by European Christians of lands already ...

by Emily McFarlan Miller

After attacks, groups launch support for Ghana’s LGBTQ community

In October 2020, Kofi Mensah was leaving a mall in central Accra, Ghana, when a group of young boys approached him and started making scornful gestures and remarks about the way he spoke and walked....

by Patrick Egwu

Amish put faith in God’s will and herd immunity over vaccine

When health-care leaders in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country began laying out a strategy to distribute COVID-19 vaccines, they knew it would be a tough sell with the Amish, who tend to be wary of preventive shots and government intervention...

by John Seewer

Documentary features defiant nuns who defied 'patriarchy of the Catholic Church’

In late June, a documentary film chronicling a group of protesting nuns who clashed with a cardinal in the 1960s became available in select theaters and on the streaming service Discovery+....

by Alejandra Molina

People

Anne Burghardt is first woman to lead Lutheran World Federation

The Lutheran World Federation has elected the first woman to head its global communion of churches....

by Emily McFarlan Miller

People

Actress Allison Mack sentenced for involvement in sex cult

Actor Allison Mack, who played a key role in the scandal-ridden, cult-like group NXIVM, was sentenced to three years in pris­on on June 30 on charges she manipulated wom­en into becoming sex slaves for the group’s spiritual leader....

by Tom Hays

People

Zsolt Balla becomes first German military rabbi in more than a century

The German military got its first rabbi in over a century on June 21, with the inauguration to the post of Hungarian-born Zsolt Balla at a synagogue in Leipzig....

Lectionary

August 15, Ordinary 20B (1 Kings 2:10–12; 3:3–14)

Solomon has everything—and still, he seeks transformation.

by Julian DeShazier

August 8, Ordinary 19B (2 Samuel 18:5–9, 15, 31–33)

David, Absalom, and the dangers of “hanging between heaven and earth”

by Julian DeShazier

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