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It was a long time ago now—but you don't forget some things, even after many years. It was a long time ago that I lived and worked as a missionary in Japan. I was a stranger there....

On June 28 a handful of fundamentalist hecklers from the Church of Wells disrupted services at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church. As reported in national and local media outlets, security removed the activists after they shouted at the popular preacher and they were arrested. While that June Sunday was not the first time the Wells hecklers visited Lakewood, it represented a bold and memorable confrontation with America’s smiling pastor.  It is easy to dismiss the Wells hecklers as fundamentalist partisans whose messages appeal to a small number of like-minded followers.

Simple, measured, and settled, the poems in Ted Kooser's new collection were composed by an artist with nothing further to prove.

c. 2015 Religion News Service...

c. 2015 Religion News Service...

(The Christian Science Monitor) John Kasich is a man of many passions....

A  year after the World Health Or­ganization declared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa a global emergency last August 8, cases are beginning to appear again....

The BDS movement posits that a just future for the Palestinians lies first of all in disengagement from and resistance to Israel. But does it?

In this week’s reading, Bathsheba, the woman David drew dripping out of her bath and into his story, is not named.

Just as it is the cable news network’s job to keep the fear-mongering ratings up, it is the job of religious leaders to remind us to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us. It is our job to make sure that we keep up our interfaith dialogue. It is also our job to inspire people to forgive.

It’s no secret that I love Ordinary Time. As time goes on, I find that the seasons I love the most in the liturgical year aren’t the high holy feasts, but the ordinary ones.

South Carolina did it. It removed a “permanently” raised Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds. Now the leaders of the National Cathedral have a decision to make: Will the Jackson-Lee windows—windows extolling the Christian faith and virtue of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and featuring images of the Confederate flag—stay or go?

c. 2015 Religion News Service (RNS) Since the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage is constitutional, Jerry Young has been in a quandary....

Two American Jewish organizations are among those helping an Israeli church recover from an arson attack....

Our beliefs inform how we live, how we order our priorities, how we spend our time and money, and how we vote. The recent papal encyclical takes this as given.

Most Americans say they want to discuss end-of-life treatment with their doctors. Yet few seriously ill patients ever actually do.

Of course Atticus Finch was a racist....

I was a security threat to Bree Newsome at the Wild Goose Festival. On Saturday, July 11, with the festival almost over, word got around: Newsome would be speaking that night. My first thoughts were: How am I going to reach an editor when there’s no cell service in this damned valley? Who’s going to lend me a laptop? Can I get enough of a Wifi signal to file a story from the café in Hot Springs? This was news, and I’m a reporter. But that’s not all I was.

When the church stops talking about Jesus, it has nothing to say.

I read To Kill a Mockingbird the summer between eighth and ninth grade. It was a hot southern summer and my mom and I went into a bookstore to look for some indoor reading....