Features
In tough straits: Can the ecumenical logjam be broken?
The ecumenical path has always been narrow, but recent events cast a new light on the limited and shifting range of ecumenical possibilities. With the exception of the success of the rapprochement of Luth eran, Reformed and United churches in Europe, intra-Protestant ecumenism seems to be dead in the water.
Smarter foreign aid: How to fix USAID
With U.S. funding, nongovernmental organizations have helped immunize millions of babies. Thanks to debt relief, most African children are in school, and in the last six years the number of people receiving HIV/AIDS medicines in developing countries has increased tenfold. Our country provides assistance through the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. But the world has changed dramatically since then. It's time for the U.S. to get smarter about how it delivers foreign aid.
A Serious Man
It’s 1967 in Minnesota, and life is getting more and more difficult for physics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg). Despite his best efforts to be a good man, a respected member of his Jewish community, a bona fide mensch, the structure of his life is collapsing like the walls of Jericho.
Books
The Pontificate of Benedict XVI: Its Premises and Promises
Four years into the papacy of Benedict XVI (formerly Joseph Ratzinger), it is said that the crowds thronging St....
Literary Genius: 25 Classic Writers Who Define English and American Literature
In his introduction, Joseph Epstein offers a broad definition of literary genius: “Timelessness, gr...
BookMarks
Molly Ivins had the good fortune of growing up in a wealthy oil family in Houston and attending elite schools, just like George W....
Intrepid twins
Imagine this: after a nine-day camel ride from Suez in 1892, identical twin sisters from Scotland arr...
Sense of the Faithful: How American Catholics Live Their Faith
Jerome Baggett wanted to know how Catholics live their faith, how they interact in their worship community and how ...
Still hungry
When I was in southern Ethiopia in 1994, I watched truck after truck roll into a community with food aid. I asked a farmer if the harvest had been bad. He told me he had an abundant harvest of tomatoes and onions—cash crops. Because of all the food aid they were receiving, he could use his land to make some extra cash—and his family would eat wheat from America. That same year I could purchase corn oil at the local grocery store—in big metal containers labeled "A gift from the people of America." I resented having to pay for what was clearly intended to be food aid.
Ways of being Catholic
Observers of American Catholicism can be alternately impressed and puzzled by its polyphony of public voices...
Departments
Another kind of surge: 30,000 Greg Mortensons
In early December, as President Obama was announcing that he was sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, Greg Mortenson was releasing his book Stones into Schools, a followup to his 2006 best-seller Three Cups of Tea....
Muslims go Dutch: While churches thrive
For many American Christians, the religious experience of modern Western Europe offers a dire warning. European church membership has been in free fall for a generation....
Shaken: To serve in an age of earthquake
A few weeks ago as I came out of the local Cineplex, my eye was caught by a large display proclaiming the thrills and wonder of the movie 2012....
Compelling characters: Zechariah's story
I’m not the only preacher who wonders occasionally about the logic of the Sunday lectionary readings. Why is this text included but not that one? I usually conclude that someone wiser than I is choosing these texts and that the logic of it will be revealed to me if I stay with the texts long enough.
News
Lutheran defectors plan new church body: May expedite launch
Lutheran dissidents said in late September they would hunker down for a year and study whether to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Amer ica and create a new church body....
Evangelical students get into once-barred dancing: The swing thing
Classes are done for the day. Meetings and work are winding down, and Facebook can provide a study break for only so long. So what’s a restless Christian college student to do?...
Obama's surge plan disappoints some on the left: "We were promised fundamental change"
Activist and author Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners magazine, noted sadly that 17,000 people had signed a petition to the White House in late November asking President Obama to lead a different kind of “surge” in Afghanistan that reli...
Election of lesbian agitatesAnglicans: Mary Glasspool of Los Angeles
The election of a lesbian priest as a bishop in the Episcopal Church is likely to cause further problems in the divided Anglican Communion, said Arch bishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. ...
Critics vow to overturn Swiss minaret ban: Surprise and dismay
A Swiss vote to ban the construction of minarets at Muslim houses of worship sent ripples of surprise and dismay across Europe and Islamic countries at the end of November, even as opponents vowed to challenge the results....
Century Marks: “Genius . . . sometimes consists of knowing when to stop.” —Columnist George Will, citing a Charles de Gaulle maxim in making a case forthe U.S. to withdraw from Afghanistan
“I take the ones I can afford and then trust in the Lord.”
—Robert Brown, 60, from North Carolina, who has heart disease and emphysema, on coping with the rising cost of prescription drugs
People
Disgraced evangelist Tony Alamo has been sentenced to 175 years in prison for child sexual abuse, with a judge warning him about facing future judgment from a higher authority. “Mr....
Patel first Muslim to win Grawemeyer religion prize: Director of Interfaith Youth Core
Eboo Patel, founder and executive director of the community service group Interfaith Youth Core, has become the first Muslim to win the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in Religion from the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Sem inary and the Univers...
Russian Orthodox: Female head of German church no reason to end talks: Ecumenical dialogue can continue
Although two celebrations of 50 years of dialogue between Russian Orthodox and German Protestant churches were canceled suddenly in a dispute over the election of a woman as Germany’s senior Protestant leader, a Russian church official says that a...
Anglican leader, in Vatican City, downplays church strains: Dialogue back on track
Speaking in Vatican City a month after the Vatican unveiled plans to facilitate the conversion of conservative Anglicans to Catholicism, Arch bishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams offered a moderately hopeful assessment of ecumenical relations betwe...
Irish Catholic cover-up of child sex abuse echoes past priestly scandals: Archbishop of Dublin offers contrite apology
A new, damning report on the large-scale child sexual abuses by Irish Catholic priests has drawn a contrite apology to victims by the archbishop of Dublin....
Scholar alters view, says Niebuhr probably wrote 'Serenity Prayer' Shapiro cites new evidence: Shapiro cites new evidence
After receiving new evidence, the editor of a prominent compilation of famous quotations now believes that theologian Reinhold Niebuhr most likely is the author of the popular “Serenity Prayer.”...
Religious conservatives ponder resistance to abortion, gay marriage: The Manhattan Declaration
Facing what they consider “threats” from American culture, prominent Cath olic, evangelical and Orthodox leaders are vowing unspecified civil disobedience against abortion, same-sex marriage and limits on religious liberty....