

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.
Distracted by our own devices
I’ve become the sort of person who checks her phone constantly. I did not have to go this way.
by Amy Frykholm
Coakley's kind of theology requires more than claims. It needs prayer.
In response to our request for essays on the subject road, we received many compelling reflections. Here is a selection.
Whether we're dying or living with grief, there are faithful ways to do so. Marilyn Chandler McEntyre points us in the right direction.
We seem to always want something—anything—to happen. This has implications for the life of prayer.
by Jeff Vogel
Azra Akšamija and Jo Murphy make art that points to things made invisible by fear—both our own fear and our society's.
I love a good mountaintop experience. It’s a moment when everything changes. Insight flares up in the mind, illuminating the moment, the experience, the problem in a whole new way. You’re never quite the same again.
One such moment for me happened in prayer when I was on a three-day silent retreat.
I gobble books by musicians. Bruce Cockburn's memoir has more virtues than most.
by Brian Doyle
Growing in prayer is not simply acquiring a set of special spiritual skills. It is growing into Christian humanity.
Micha Boyett writes tenderly about her Southern Baptist background, even as she grafts herself into a more liturgical expression of the faith.
My student hasn’t allegorized Jane Eyre as Origen did the Bible. But she wrestles with passages until the text gives her a blessing.
“When I started out I was focused on whether God was or was not out there. Now I am much more comfortable with ambiguity.”
by Amy Frykholm
Wendy Cadge asks, What happens to religion when hospitals, many of them founded by religious groups, are secularized or otherwise constrained to serve patients beyond their founding communities?
reviewed by R. Stephen Warner
In the pristine white glare of the airport corridor, the linoleum became my prayer rug. But my solitude was short lived.
Deo gratias. That’s what the sign in my office says. It’s not fancy, just two words laser-printed on office paper and tacked up over the computer monitor so I can read it dozens of times a day.
The phrase—which means “Thanks be to God”—is the traditional Benedictine greeting that monks offer visitors.
The answer that comes out of a tornado is not the kind of answer we want.
by Rodney Clapp