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Looks like Jesus the Homeless is coming to Chicago. Erica Demarest reports that the local Catholic Charities office plans to put up one of Timothy Schmalz's sculptures—which depict an unkempt Jesus, with stigmata, sleeping on a park bench—this spring. Weekend Edition did a segment Sunday on the sculpture at St. Alban's Episcopal in Davidson, North Carolina. Apparently some locals aren't fans.

Eggers’s novel is about a mega social network corporation that takes over the world—seemingly benevolently. Its characters have no depth or soul; their personhood is defined by electronic connectedness. 

Most spirituality books provide advice for cultivating the familiar set of spiritual disciplines. This book is different.

Elizabeth Johnson shows how biblically informed faith comes alive when we look at the world through the lens of Darwin’s Origin of Species.

To Eugene Peterson, a church is not a demarcated zone of idealized community. The potential for misdirection and distraction abounds.

Thomas discerns what neither Mary Magdalene nor the other disciples did: that Jesus is both “my Lord and my God.” I wonder if we need to explore more seriously Thomas’s approach to faith. We sing “We Walk by Faith and Not by Sight,” but what is wrong with walking by both?

c. 2014 USA Today (RNS) Allan Finkelstein’s phone began ringing soon after a gunman killed three people at two Jewish sites in the suburbs of Kansas City on Sunday....

The Mustang, Oklahoma, school board has voted to adopt a Bible course developed by Steve Green, clearing the way for the Hobby Lobby president—whose suit against the Affordable Care Act is currentl...

“These old buildings are well made and historic,” my real estate agent friend interjected. “Surely we can think of new uses for them.”

The readings for Good Friday conclude with tender and brave acts of love (John 19:38-42). Both Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus are cautious—Joseph is a secret disciple of Jesus, and Nicodemus had come to Jesus in the night, perhaps with a hood over his head and looking over his shoulder the whole way. Yet these two hesitant men demonstrate courage.

It’s almost Easter, which can mean only one thing: it’s time for the blockbuster Bible bestsellers. Last week, Bart Ehrman promoted his new book, How Jesus Became God, on NPR’s Fresh Air. Ehrman advances a common argument: Christian conceptions of Jesus’ identity grew more elaborate with time. His followers first perceived Jesus as a remarkable preacher or prophet, but eventually believers came to regard him as God incarnate. Although I was aware of Ehrman’s book, I missed the publicity blitz.

Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. How easily we pass over them, eyes set eagerly on Easter Sunday. Or anticipating Thursday’s opening of the Triduum. Our first half of Holy Week probably looks a lot like yours. Work. School. Kids. Meetings. Chores. Bills. The lackluster pregame show before the big kickoff. The forgettable prelude before the fanfare. The ordinary before the extraordinary. 

Pope Gregory the Great’s famous treatise, written at the end of the sixth century, presents challenges to and must be adapted for contemporary Protestant clergy. It is a provocative countercultural voice filled with wisdom for a young pastor. 

Reinhold Niebuhr was 23 years old when he began this journal of his experience as the pastor of a blue-collar church in Detroit. Pastors will be reassured to read how even the great Niebuhr struggles with the pastoral role. 

At the heart of evangelicals’ conflicted identity, Molly Worthen argues, is the “struggle to reconcile reason with revelation, heart with head, and private piety with the public square.”

The Harriet Beecher Stowe of Nancy Koester’s new biography is not the one with which most readers are familiar—the “little woman who made this big war,” as Abraham Lincoln reportedly said about the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

President Obama called for people of all faiths to deter gun violence and anti-Semitism one day after a gunman killed three people at Jewish centers in suburban Kansas City....

Eroding campaign finance rules gives wealthy donors more power. It may also generate cynicism and political disengagement.

When Jesus moves away from the table, strips down, and ties a towel around his waist (John 13:4), I don’t think he is thinking about how stinky James’s feet always are, or about the bunions that have been growing on Matthew’s foot as they made their way to Jerusalem. Rather, he is in the process of inviting the disciples into the most wonderful life imaginable—one in which love, intimacy, and humble service bring both deep delight and freedom from trivialities.

Smithsonian magazine has announced the finalists in its annual photo contest....