Magazine /

August 28, 2019

Volume 136, Issue #18

Download issue PDF ›
All back issues ›

Features

a C-section underway in an operating room

First Person

Seeing the crucified Christ in my wife’s C-section

I see love incarnate in suffering flesh, a body bearing a body in pain for love.

by Brad East

Critical Essay

A letter from Paul to Christians in the US

Let me cut to the chase, brothers and sisters. Is this what you think living in Christ looks like?

by Michael J. Gorman

First Person

We’re all going to die. Why is it so hard to talk about it?

Most of us don’t fear death so much as the process leading up to it.

by Lori Erickson

Critical Essay

Howard Thurman’s contemplative nonviolence

The pastor and mentor to Martin Luther King formed a vision of resistance around prayer, not politics.

by Myles Werntz

Books

In a politically divided church, what’s the preacher to do?

The answer, says Leah Schade, is about dialogue as much as any single sermon.

by Clint Schnekloth

Can libraries save us?

What holds the world together, Eric Klinenberg believes, is social infrastructure.

by Samuel Wells

In praise of Elie Wiesel

Two tributes that offer behind-the-scenes glimpses of the beloved teacher

by David P. Gushee

Four people, one church

Cara Wall writes beautifully about something novelists rarely address: a mainline Protestant congregation.

by Amy Frykholm

Departments

First Words

Cancer is a struggle, not a battle

3 reasons the warfare metaphor is problematic

by Peter W. Marty

On Art

Father Frans van der Lugt, by Jordan Denari Duffner

During the civil war in Syria, when many left the country to escape violence and hunger, Dutch Jesuit priest Frans van der Lugt insisted on remaining in the city of Hom, where he ministered to the disabled and to sought to foster harmony between M...

Art selection and comment by Lil Copan