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February 23, 2022

Volume 139, Issue #4
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Features

What happens when Mormon women are called to ordained ministry?

Talking with five former LDS members who left to go to seminary

by David Howlett and Nancy Ross

Interviews

A new lectionary that centers women

“If the gospel isn’t good news to the women in the passage, is it still good news?”

Grace Ji-Sun Kim interviews Wil Gafney

Evolutionary science meets evangelical faith

How teachers are helping students accept science without losing their religion

by Dean Nelson

First Person

The Dominican friars whose library is transforming Islamic studies

How a rare books collection in Cairo expanded into a center for scholarship and interfaith conversation

by David A. Hoekema

The Chair and the collapse of the humanities

Who, exactly, should preside over meaning-making?

by Claire Miller Colombo

Books

Rescuing faith from scientific imperialism

Kara Slade’s scathing yet incisive volume abounds with examples of modern hubris.

by J. Scott Jackson

Catholic acts of mercy during the AIDS crisis

Michael O’Loughlin paints a vivid portrait of the complex, compassionate, and sometimes daring ways individual Catholics responded.

by Aaron Klink

Joseph de Maistre’s magnum opus is still perplexing after 200 years

Les soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg has often been dismissed as propaganda. It isn’t.

by Nathan J. Ristuccia

Tutu the mystic

Michael Battle’s biography focuses on the archbishop’s religious moorings.

by Charles Scriven

Departments

Faith Matters

Lent beckons like an open door

For 40 days, we contend with our mortality so that we might know what it means to live.

by Debra Dean Murphy

First Words

What does it mean to be a Christian plumber?

Most of us have nouns in common; it’s the adjectives that divide us.

by Peter W. Marty

On Art

Parables of Luke triptych, by Charalambos Epaminonda

Three paintings, acrylic on canvas, of the prodigal son, the sower of seed, and the good Samaritan make up this triptych by Greek Cypriot artist Charalam...

art selection and comment by John Kohan

Screen Time

Station Eleven and the purpose of art

With the world as they knew it gone, the characters remake the world from the resources they carry inside them.

by Kathryn Reklis

From the Editors

Why should we care about what’s happening to the Uyghurs?

Chamath Palihapitiya’s question is worth taking seriously.

News

Baptist leader calls denial of voting rights ‘evil’

On the day of a major voting rights debate on Capitol Hill, a social justice coordinator for the Progressive National Baptist Convention said fighting for voting rights is an effort to conquer evil....

by Adelle M. Banks

Vatican rises to Benedict XVI’s defense after Munich abuse report

After a damaging report on clergy sexual abuse in the archdiocese headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before he became Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican on January 26 defended the emeritus pope, advising against seeking “easy scapegoats and summary j...

by Claire Giangravé

Claremont School of Theology ordered to offer land to neighboring colleges

According to the Los Angeles County Superior Court, Claremont School of Theology must offer its Claremont, California, campus for sale to the Claremont Colleges, a neighboring consortium of schools—and for a price likely to be millions below fair ...

by Sam Hodges

Christian community in Nigeria counts losses after flood incident

When Emmanuel Nkwea left his house for his farm on a Saturday morning in September 2021, he was hoping to return with food items for his family....

by Ekpali Saint

Princeton Theological Seminary removes slaveholder name from chapel

Princeton Theological Seminary’s board has unanimously voted to dissociate the name of slaveholder and anti-abolitionist Samuel Miller from the school’s chapel....

by Kathryn Post

Famed medieval Jewish woman recognized with new statue

She was one of the most wealthy fi­nanciers of her day, known to the kings of England and described as the most important Jewish woman of medieval England. She was also brutally murdered in what may have been a 13th-century hate crime....

by Catherine Pepinster

People

Global Buddhist spiritual leader Thich Nhat Hanh dies at 95

Thich Nhat Hanh, global Buddhist spiritual leader and longtime Viet­namese political exile, died on January 22. He was 95....

by Ira Rifkin

People

Jim Winkler resigns as head of National Council of Churches

The National Council of Churches announced on Janu­ary 26 that Jim Winkler, its general secretary and president since 2013, is leaving his post....

by Adelle M. Banks

People

Methodist pastor elected to interdenominational leadership in Congo

Gabriel Yemba Unda, the first United Methodist bishop of the East Congo Episcopal Area, has been elected provincial president of the Church of Christ in the Congo in the Congolese district of Maniema....

by Judith Osongo and Philippe Kituka Lolonga

Lectionary

March 13, Lent 2C (Luke 13:31-35)

Is the fox cunning and clever, or is it wily and untrustworthy?

by Jennifer Moland-Kovash

March 6, Lent 1C (Luke 4:1-13)

The wilderness can be a frightening landscape that whispers from the shadows, “You’re all alone.”

by Jennifer Moland-Kovash

March 2, Ash Wednesday (Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21)

Some years the message of Ash Wednesday feels more tender than others.

by Jennifer Moland-Kovash

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