

Since 1900, the Christian Century has published reporting, commentary, poetry, and essays on the role of faith in a pluralistic society.
© 2023 The Christian Century.
Who is solitude for?
David Vincent’s exhaustive tome suggests that fruitful solitude has often been linked to privilege.
by Jon Sweeney
My dad died from COVID-19. My grief is a lonely one.
I’m the only person he loved the way he loved me.
Has social distancing put us in a double pandemic?
Loneliness is a public health crisis, too.
by Julia Walsh
Our problem isn’t just loneliness—it’s species loneliness
How human isolation from the rest of the world keeps us from thriving.
Biblical friendship in an age of loneliness
Facebook tells me I have 633 friends. Sirach tells me how few of those are faithful friends.
Anjali Sachdeva is wise, insightful, and just getting started
In Sachdeva's debut story collection, magical realism meets a keen eye for character.
At the deathbed of a man who cared for others
Every week, Cameron visited the lonely and afflicted. Now I’m visiting him.
There I am in the bottom bunk of my small room in the old hall, with my roommate snoring above me, the roommate I hardly saw and hardly knew.
by Brian Doyle
No one from the outside can fully grasp the inner workings of any marriage. Even those inside sometimes find themselves lonely and strangers.
What goes on in the mind of a leader who tires of building consensus and just strives to get things done?
As I prepared to be ordained recently, my mind kept returning to the people in my life who might be perplexed by this decision. I have friends and colleagues who wonder, quite justly, what the church has to offer that one cannot find elsewhere. I thought about how I might describe what pulls me toward ministry and the church in particular.
For my money, John’s is the only Gospel in which Jesus seems really lonely.
by Kat Banakis