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December 2, 2020

Volume 137, Issue #25
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Features

First Person

I was a scribe for the Chicago Illuminated Scripture Project

What would possess me to copy a chapter of the Bible by hand?

by Heidi Haverkamp

Critical Essay

Billy Graham and Barack Obama each offered a pastoral voice in a time of tragedy

We need someone to speak to our moment, too.

by Grant Wacker

Critical Essay

What we lost when the funeral home replaced the home funeral

Death rituals used to happen in our houses. What if we brought them back?

by Christiana N. Peterson

First Person

Grieving my daughter’s suicide in a time of wider grief

My years of experience as an undertaker didn’t make it easier.

by Thomas Lynch

First Person

My dad died from COVID-19. My grief is a lonely one.

I’m the only person he loved the way he loved me.

by Charlotte Donlon

Reflection

How do we grieve the hundreds of thousands of people the COVID-19 pandemic has killed?

We posed this question to five writers.

I

Books

The Old Testament, the Tanakh, and the Hebrew Bible

Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler show how multiple traditions arise when different people read the same text.

by George C. Heider

Journeying with Father Dan and a coyote along the via negativa

Daniel Hornsby’s debut novel has a wonderful road-trippy feeling.

by Amy Frykholm

When religion thrived in New York

Jon Butler’s dazzling study of faith and practice in a 20th-century metropolis

by Philip Jenkins

Departments

Faith Matters

Mary’s song reveals her politics of mercy

I think Jesus learned his prophetic ministry from his mother.

by Isaac S. Villegas

From the Editors

Looking to Advent as we grieve our COVID-19 dead

Lament and longing can be companions.
Screen Time

Ted Lasso is the soccer coach we all need

What if kindness, honesty, and compassion were valued more than winning?

by Kathryn Reklis

First Words

George H. W. Bush’s letter to Bill Clinton was a model of respect and solidarity

What will Donald Trump leave for Joe Biden?

by Peter W. Marty

On Art

“I Can’t Breathe,” by Carl Dixon

George Floyd’s dying words on a Minneapolis street have become a lament for the nation....

art selection and comment by John Kohan

News

Religious diversity in the election

On November 3, the United States elected its first Catholic president in 60 years, but that wasn’t the only important religion angle of the 2020 election....

by Dawn Araujo-Hawkins

A more conservative court hears same-sex foster parent case

On November 4, the Supreme Court seemed likely to side with a Catholic social services agency in a dispute with the city of Philadelphia over the agency’s refusal to work with same-sex couples as foster parents....

by Jessica Gresko

Church coalitions in Deep South partner on racial reconciliation

Leaders of multiracial church coalitions in three southern cities have confessed to being too “comfortable” and have committed anew to “work for justice to right past wrongs” and seek racial unity....

by Adelle M. Banks

Study finds that young queer people quit organized religion almost twice as much as others

 

Taylor Valci was seven the first time she spoke in tongues. The daughter of a Pentecostal pastor in California’s Bay Area, she grew up watching Veggie Tales and attending Missionettes, the Assem­blies of God version of Girl Scouts....

by Kathryn Post

In Nashville, a former Catholic school-turned-swingers club is reborn as a homeless shelter

The red brick building at the corner of Drexel Street and Seventh Avenue South in Nash­ville has a colorful history....

by Bob Smietana

People

Influential British rabbi Jonathan Sacks dies at 72

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, a widely admired teacher and prolific writer who connected Jewish thought with a larger concern for universal human values, died on November 7....

by Yonat Shimron

People

Gospel music legend Rance Allen dies at 71

Rance Allen, a Gospel Music Hall of Fame inductee perhaps best known for his hit “Some­thing About the Name Jesus,” died on October 31 at the age of 71....

by Roxanne Stone

People

Head of Serbian Orthodox Church hospitalized with COVID-19

The 90-year-old patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church was hospitalized after testing positive for the coronavirus, days after leading prayers at a large public funeral for the head of the church in Montenegro, who died after contracting the vir...

Lectionary

December 20, Advent 4B (Luke 1:26–38)

We are still asking Mary's question: How will this be?

by Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones

December 13, Advent 3B (John 1:6–8, 19–28)

John the Baptist has a brand.

by Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones

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