Guest Post

New today from the Century: John Buchanan on preaching Easter, MaryAnn McKibben Dana on "leaning in," more.

When a hospital charges you $1.50 for a Tylenol pill—which a consumer can buy for 1.5 cents— you may shrug and figure you just don’t understand the system. But Steven Brill’s cover story in Time magazine shows that the 10,000 percent markup on Tylenol is just a hint of the vast price-gouging that goes on in hospital billing. 

New today from the Century: Chris Herlinger talks Graham Greene with Pico Iyer, Amy Frykholm reviews Alice Munro, more.

New today from the Century: New ministry dilemma from Ellen Blue, with response by Craig Barnes; more.

In a recent editorial calling for same-sex marriage to be legal, the Century editors noted that if and when legalization happens at the national level, the First Amendment will protect religious groups that have their own position on the question. The government won’t, for example, be able to force a church or minister to perform a same-sex wedding against their will.  Yet as Mark Silk notes, a range of religious liberty questions will likely have to be addressed—and probably litigated.

New today from the Century: Phil Jenkins on Latin American secularism, David Heim on same-sex marriage and the courts, more.

Would you want your son or daughter to go to a college where it is legal to possess a loaded gun in a dorm room? If not, you may want to think twice about sending your child to school in Texas. A bill under consideration in the state Senate, S. B. 182, would require all public colleges and universities to allow holders of a concealed handgun license to carry loaded weapons on campus.

New today from the Century: cover story on atonement, concealed carry on college campuses, more.

New today from the Century: Barbara Melosh on a church that cleared a path, Kendra Weddle Irons on good biblical women and shopping, more.

A number of activist organizations are declaring March 15-17 "National Gun Violence Prevention Sabbath Weekend." It's not clear if this is meant to replace The Brady Center's "God Not Guns Sabbath," which has been observed on the last weekend of September for a number of years. But the organizers seem eager to keep the event broadly ecumenical and interfaith.

New today from the Century: Martin Copenhaver on his long pastorate, Kathryn Reklis on Beautiful Creatures, more.

New today from the Century: Lillian Daniel reviews Justin Lee, Randall Balmer on C. Everett Koop, more.

New today from the Century: Sam Wells on a homelessness immersion experience, Debra Bendis on Taras Grescoe's book, more.

New today from the Century: The editors on same-sex marriage, Brueggemann on Joerg Rieger and Kwok Pui-lan's book on Occupy, more.

New today from the Century: A church upcycles glass, spring training stories, more.

New today from the Century: The winter life of bees, the sequester and other ridiculous things, more.

If you haven’t realized the urgent need for an expanded Violence Against Women Act, read today’s New York Times, where novelist Louise Erdrich restates the theme that runs through her powerful novel The Round House (reviewed in a previous post): Native American women are being battered and raped by non-native men, and they have no legal support for pursuing justice—because non-natives are immune from prosecution by tribal courts.

New today from the Century: Rodney Clapp on violence in movies, new blog feature by American religious historians, more.

New today from the Century: James Howell reviews Lillian Daniel, Evan Garner on the downside of winning, more.