Features
Costly hospitality: Learning trust at Rutba House
Opening ourselves to others takes time. But love is a prisoner who stays up all night with a sharpened toothbrush, working away at a crack in the wall.
Out of Syria: Archbishop Cyril Karim
"On my first visit to the United States, someone asked when I converted to Christianity. I told him 2,000 years ago."
A wealth of lectionaries
An annotated list of lectionaries and lectionary supplements and proposals.
What's the text: Alternatives to the common lectionary
The RCL includes a few "optional" readings, to be subbed in as needed. Of course, it's all optional.
Books
What W. H. Auden Can Do for You, by Alexander McCall Smith
It is no surprise to people who have read Smith’s novels that he has an appreciation for the poetry of W. H....
The body in question
The two best writers on American ways of death, burial and grieving have given us our best book on funerals.
Uncollected Poems, by R. S. Thomas; edited by Jason Walford Davies and Tony Brown
Welsh poet and priest R. S. Thomas had a creative energy that spanned the second half of the 20th century.
Bonhoeffer the Assassin? by Mark Thiessen Nation, Anthony G. Siegrist and Daniel P. Umbel
All Bonhoeffer scholarship recognizes his advocacy for nonviolence. Some goes farther, arguing that this was an overriding commitment that trumped all others.
Pastor Francis
Chesterton wrote that what St. Benedict stored, St. Francis scattered. It was a prophetic phrase.
The Longest Road, by Philip Caputo
After his elderly father died and he himself was approaching 70, Caputo took a road trip, cutting diagonally across America and a corner of Canada....
Departments
Lusophone evangelism
Portugal no longer sends out missionaries on any scale, but Brazil has taken up that mantle. Worldwide, one in 11 Christians speak Portuguese.
Pastor as pope
Pope Francis understands that people are rarely argued into the church, but they are often loved into it.
Plain speech
Sometimes it feels like a thick mist has descended on us, distorting communication. But then a face shines through the mist and dispels it.
The Duck at prayer
In case you haven't noticed, Duck Dynasty is ruling the world. And the popular reality show has a prayer in every episode.
Three paintings by Betty LaDuke
Rwanda: Celebrating the Gift of the Heifer “Consolation”; Poland: Brzezowka Village Hen Project; Uganda: Mrs. Nanfuka Teopista’s Goats, by Betty LaDuke...
Still hopeful
I have great respect and gratitude for our democratic system. But my respect and gratitude are being tried.
News
After long slump, number of Catholic seminarians on the rise
After decades of glum trends—fewer priests, fewer parishes—the Catholic Church in the United States has a statistic to cheer: more men are now enrolled in graduate-level seminaries—the main pipeline to the priesthood—than in nearly two decades....
Evangelicals ‘worse’ than Catholics on sexual abuse
A Liberty University law professor and grandson of Billy Graham has told reporters that he thinks evangelicals are worse than Catholics when it comes to responding to sexual abuse by clergy....
Tracking the ‘nominals’
They are rarely at worship services and are indifferent to doctrine. And they’re surprisingly fuzzy on Jesus....
Hobby Lobby will offer Jewish holiday items
The owner of the Hobby Lobby craft store chain, under fire because his stores did not carry Hanukkah merchandise and because of a reported employee’s remark that offended many Jews, has apologized and announced that some stores will begin to carry...
North Carolina Catholics leave council of churches
At a time when Pope Francis is calling for the church to give up its obsession with homosexuality and abortion, North Carolina’s Roman Catholic dioceses are severing a long-held ecumenical bond over those issues....
Poll on American Jews locates winners, losers
As the proverbial dust settles on a new Pew Research Center poll of 3,475 Jewish Americans released October 1, experts are starting to sort out the study’s “winners” and “losers.”
Winners:
• Orthodox Jews...
Supreme Court poised to turn right in 2013 term
After two blockbuster terms in which it saved President Obama’s health-care law and advanced the cause of same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court appears poised to tack to the right in its upcoming term on a range of social issues, from abortion and ...