Features
Thanksgiving contradictions: Confessions of a volunteer
It’s almost Thanksgiving, and soon my church in New York City will be serving turkey with all the trimmings to over 400 people. I play a major role in this volunteer effort and sometimes I feel quite virtuous. At last, I tell myself, I’m learning how to feel useful during a holiday that is emotionally fraught for many. But sometimes the annual meal looks less like a joyful act of holiday giving than a thinly disguised act of “slumming.” Those of us serving the meal will be almost uniformly white, after all, while those being served will be mostly black and Hispanic. After the meal is over, the “out-of-towners” will go home and eat healthier, more gourmet Thanksgiving meals.
Zealous skeptic: Bill Maher's Religulous
Whereas new atheist writers like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are deadly serious, Bill Maher’s mockumentary on religion, Religulous, is as funny as Maher’s comedy show on HBO.
That girl who prays: Chloe and the Gypsies
When A Banjara Indian woman named Mary came to our church to talk to us, nine-year-old Chloe was there. Chloe had to be there. We could not let Chloe miss a chance to meet a Banjara woman, because Chloe had been praying for the Banjara for four years.
First fruits: Broetje Orchards puts people before profits
When hail wiped out 70 percent of the 2006 apple crop at Broetje Orchards, Ralph and Cheryl Broetje and their management team had a decision to make. The insurance company would pay on the business’s policy only if no further harvesting of the orchard’s fruit were done. If they agreed, the Broetjes would recover some of their costs. But hundreds of their year-round workers would lose their jobs, and migrant workers would be left unemployed.
Ghost Town
The first “ghost comedy” was an effervescent 1937 charmer called Topper, in which two of the most elegant high comedians in movies, Cary Grant and Constance Bennett, crashed their roadster and immediately rebounded, their insouciant personalities utterly unchanged, as specters. That’s the joke on which ghost comedies are premised: death doesn’t alter a thing except corporeal reality.
Books
Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy
In 1621 Robert Burton published The Anatomy of Melancholy, and now, nearly 400 years later, Eric Wilson has given us what amount...
Spies and lies
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Public pews
For the past four decades the mainline Protestant churches have been working hard to shape p...
Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America's College Campuses
When I was a student at St....
Departments
More than a free lunch: Many ways to give
Lydie Raschka’s article on her experience of helping serve dinner to homeless and hungry people at Thanksgiving raises issues that I think about a lot these days....
American pie: The truth about redistribution
In the course of discussing tax policy with an unlicensed Ohio plumber, Barack Obama suggested that “spreading the wealth around” a bit more would be good for the country....
Whatever happens: Ce qui arrive
There are times when the world, instead of being the solid stage on which we conduct our affairs, instead of enveloping us in its massive givenness, seems to totter at the cliff’s edge....
A theological rationale for government: Human depravity necessitates accountability
The frightening downturn on Wall Street has caused even some staunch antigovernment pundits to begin rethinking their assumption that all government regulation is bad. That is a rethinking this country desperately needs....
News
Century Marks
Cuddle and preach? Some people allege that Mattel’s Little Mommy Cuddle N’ Coo doll emits the words “Islam is the light.” The toy manufacturer says that the sound emitted resembles the word night, right or light. The company promises to eliminate the misleading sound in future production of the doll (UPI).
People
The late Pope John Paul II was stabbed by a priest in Portugal in 1982, almost one year to the day after the shooting attempt on his life in St. Peter’s Square, according to a new film....
Briefly noted
An Episcopal Church committee voted October 17 to oust more than 50 California clerics who left the denomination last year to join a more conservative province in the Anglican Communion....
Iraq urged to quell anti-Christian violence: WCC and NCC leaders express concern
In the wake of recent deadly violence against Christians in northern Iraq, the top executive of the National Council of Churches has welcomed the urgent call by Samuel Kobia, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, for the UN and the I...
Breakaway PCUSA church buys title from presbytery: Kirk of the Hills
Ending a long legal battle, the largest congregation to break its ties with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in the past two years has voted narrowly to pay $1.75 million for the land and buildings it occupies in Tulsa, Oklahoma....
Seminary sermon may signal thaw among Texas Baptists
At Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
Black churches struggle to survive in downtown: "In it for the long haul"
A fading sign at the corner of Cleveland’s East 79th Street and Golden Avenue announces the Last Stop Bonanza Inc. as “the stop that has your everyday needs”—even though the gate is locked and the space is filled with trash....
New adventures in niche Bible publishing: The Bible gets a makeover
The Bible is getting a makeover as publishers try to catch every type of customer’s attention and draw in new readers who would be unlikely to pick up the holy tome in its traditional form....
Churches assess impact of financial crisis: Pension funds said to be secure
During what some call the start of a recession, mainline church officials are assuring pastors and retirees that their pension funds are secure....
Senior Schuller breaks with son over TV roles: Hour of Power in jeopardy
After turning over the Crystal Cathedral pulpit nearly three years ago to his son as the main preacher on the Hour of Power TV program, founding pastor Robert H....
Lectionary
Worth the wait: Isaiah 64:1-9
Isaiah refuses to pretend anymore.