Church
Global aid writ Lutheran
“We see hope in the small things,” says LWF World Service director Maria Immonen, “but also despair—because the solutions are right there, just out of our reach.”
The wounds of Catholic women
When the Vatican rejected a bid to allow laypeople to preach at mass, I felt again the toll of being dismissed by the church I call home.
September 6, Ordinary 23A (Matthew 18:15–20)
Jesus is not handing the church a timeless conflict resolution manual, however much we might long for one.
What Gen Z knows about the church
It’s not that they know nothing; it’s just that we don’t like to talk about what they know.
The common good in the age of AI
Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical shows how Catholic social teaching was built to outlast any single issue, including the newest ones.
The church is disappearing from the middle
Religious identity in the US now follows partisan affiliation, says demographer Ryan Burge. But congregations could still be places where that sorting gets undone.
A feast day for the whole church
“The Feast of Creation in Christ names our need to celebrate God’s saving work in creation,” says liturgical theologian Kimberly Belcher, “and to do so together.”
My dying best friend’s wedding
She collapsed on the sidewalk the night of my wedding. Eighteen months later, I stood by her hospital bed and offered to plan hers.
Black holes and supernovas
One kind of pastor collapses everything into themself. The other expands until they forget where they started.
The graven image of growth
Practical theologian Andrew Root believes churches are bowing to the never-ending demand for production.
A religion too wild to nationalize
After 250 years, US Christianity remains too diverse, splintered, and strange to be conscripted into any one political project.
Midwestern Ethiopia
Kai Parker charts the rise of Ethiopianism, a movement that stemmed from the 1896 Battle of Adwa—and changed Chicago forever.
The church’s crisis of vocational theology
What would Frederick Buechner say about the world’s persistent hunger for gladless jobs?
At home with the Baptists
At my first gathering of Baptists in decades, I found something I didn’t know I was missing: testimony.
June 28, Ordinary 13A (Matthew 10:40–42)
I saw Jesus. It was Easter morning, 1988.