Feature

The just war tradition is meant to be more than a tidy checklist of criteria for evaluating a conflict. The tradition developed not as a theory to be bandied about, but as a rigorous ecclesial practice that arose out of the church’s day-to-day life and shapes that life. The tradition is a form of Christian discipleship, an expression of the character of Christian communities concerned daily with justice and with loving their near and distant neighbors.

Cramming more than 50 high school students into a small room for a Bible study is challenging, but getting them to talk about sex is not. When the hand of one 15-year-old boy shot up in the back of the room, I braced myself. “Is masturbation a sin?—I really gotta know.” I was proud of him—using a word like sin is hard for a teenager.

The absence of community surrounds us in a daily way—in our neighborhoods, our work lives and the anguish of our own souls. The scarcity of community wreaks havoc below the surface of outwardly busy lives. From the ethos of economic life to the chatter of talk radio, our society is busy promoting the appetites and fantasies of the individual more than it encourages investment in the larger aspirations of a community.

Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan

A new pastor learns about the church's annual tarrin’ party.

Ten years ago Rebecca Chopp described how women’s voices and feminist practices were transforming theological education and the church. Women, she said, were “doing saving work.” At a time when the diversity of feminist theology defies tidy definitions and agreed-upon agendas, “doing saving work” suggests what’s afoot in feminist theology today—bold reinterpretations of Christianity that seek to renew the life of the church and its witness to the world.