The Christian Century

I thumbed through a stack of Xeroxed images, looking at the multiple faces of Jesus that a friend compiled for her theology paper. She had gone to the library and photocopied profiles from around the globe.

How has the "myth of the model minority" affected the lives and work of Asian-American women? How is the myth used in our society? Please join Derrick Weston and I as we talk with Mihee Kim-Kort about her book Making Paper Cranes.

Right now, there are a lot of pastors who ought to be looking in the mirror and chanting, “It’s not all about me.” 

After the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary, people of faith yearned to respond.

Richard Twiss and I spent time meditating and praying together, particularly discerning the question, “Who God is calling us to be?”

How do you practice Sabbath in this busy, stressed-out world? Is Sabbath just a luxury for those who don't have kids?

Even as a Reformed minister, who is a product of the regrettable history of iconoclasm and who warns that our minds can be "factories of idols," I know every worshiping community has sacred items. 

If life is the most important thing in a political and theological belief system, then why would a person support the death penalty, back wars and oppose gun violence prevention?

It would be easy for those of us who lean to the left of the political spectrum to dismiss the right by saying that they are waging a war on women, but that would deny the whole picture. What about Sarah Palin? What about Michelle Bachmann? And what about the other Grizzly Mamas who are being plucked, groomed and prepared as we speak?

I’m proud to be a part of a movement whose great concern is learning to love your neighbor as you love yourself. And as we move into the new year, I hope those voices of justice will grow stronger—and I wish for some other things as well.

I often wonder what Jesus was getting at when he asked his disciple, “Who do you say that I am?” Was Jesus testing the waters, trying to figure out if the people and his friends understood the nature of his divinity? Was he trying to figure out if his rabble rousing was about to get him killed? Was he concerned with how his identity was formed by the community? Or was he simply wondering what people thought about him?

Here are the 12 Tribal Church posts people read the most this year.

I’m not always enamored with our traditional, staged pictures of the nativity—with Mary on her knees in adoration. 

One week after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school, there seem to be so many failures in the ways that our theology is playing out in the public sphere. And while quick responses, blog posts, sound bytes and tweets are important in this moment, as they emerge from varying political and evangelistic agendas they also expose some of Christianity's devastating aspects.

There is a particular authority that comes from privilege. When a white man steps into the place where he belongs, he has an internal power with which he was born. He is entitled. Like royalty, he sits on the throne naturally, because that place is caught in his blood. But an entirely different power emerges from women who have been told that they are not allowed to speak in church—and suddenly rise behind the pulpit. Something flares up from deep inside of them, and when they have a safe space, the words can come out of them with force and fury.