"The walking dead.” These are the words of African-American soldier Leon Bass as he described the horror he saw when Americans liberated prisoners in the Buchenwald prison camp in April 1945. Today some call confirmed drug addicts “the walking dead.” Then there’s the book/film Dead Man Walking—which describes many of us spiritually.
We are still free to choose whose slaves we will be.
Sound alternatives
Day of ColoursReal World Records, World music/QawwaliRizwan-Muazzam QawwaliThe brothers Rizwan and Muazzam, nephews of the late Sufi singing great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, deliver a majestic album. Imagine the droning power of Gregorian chant melded with the expressiveness of blues shouters. With the simple instrumentation of harmonium and tablas, Colours addresses spiritual themes central to the Qawwali tradition. “Light of My Life,” a Persian song in praise of Allah, is particularly arresting.
Roman Catholic and Anglican leaders have announced newfound agreement on the Virgin Mary, seeing her as a role model and “Christ’s foremost disciple.”
Ricoeur, 92, an influential thinker on both sides of the Atlantic, died May 20 at home in Chatenay-Malabry near Paris after a months-long illness.
The May 9-16 Conference on World Mission and Evangelism, held outside of Athens, was the 12th such meeting since 1910—when the modern ecumenical movement began in Edinburgh.
A “faith-based economy,” argues Frederick H. Borsch, is based not so much on a “preferential option for the poor” as on a concern for the well-being of a community in which no one is left behind or left out or deprived of dignity. This is a goal that can never be achieved, yet should not be surrendered. says Borsch (Anglican Theological Review, Winter).