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January 12, 2017

Volume 134, Issue #3

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Features

First Person

At the deathbed of a man who cared for others

Every week, Cameron visited the lonely and afflicted. Now I’m visiting him.

by Isaac S. Villegas

First Person

A preacher and an ironworker

During seminary, I spent my summer breaks building bridges.

by Bruce K. Modahl

Can retiring pastors mentor their own successors?

Now that 60 is the new 50, creative models are emerging for ministry transitions.

by L. Gail Irwin

Interviews

A conversation with David Brooks about sin and beauty

“We live differently than we say we live. There’s moral judgment all around.”

Matt Fitzgerald interviews David Brooks

Voices

Samuel Wells

Christ the artist, we the portfolio

We are God’s artifacts—beautiful, incomplete, and mysterious.

Books

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

Holiness in every drop

Judith Schwartz and Michael E. Webber each call attention to the challenges facing the water over which the Spirit broods.

by Ragan Sutterfield

Elegies without consolation

An anthology of poetry mourning the demise of the Church of England

by Jill Peláez Baumgaertner

A rabbi’s memoir of making a family

Anyone with a complicated life and family—all of us—will find a home in Susan Silverman’s story.

by Arianne Braithwaite Lehn

Departments

First Words

Our microbes are Legion

My friend Angie’s life is crippled by compulsive acts of decontamination.

by Peter W. Marty

On Art

Transfiguration, by Fra Angelico

While a Dominican monk at San Marco’s monastery in Florence, Fra Angelico (1395–1455) was commissioned to paint frescoes in the meeting rooms and dormitory cells of the lay brothers, novices, and clergy....

Art selection and commentary by Heidi J. Hornik and Mikeal C. Parsons

Faith Matters

Christ the artist, we the portfolio

We are God’s artifacts—beautiful, incomplete, and mysterious.

by Samuel Wells

On Media

A multiracial family’s questions and fears

This Is Us depicts the dangers of life alone and the complications of life together.

by Jeff Chu

From the Editors

Whatever replaces Obamacare will face the same challenges

Sick people need coverage. Insurers need healthy customers, too. Everyone needs to be able to afford it.

News

In Middle East conflicts, families struggle to care for elderly members

(The Christian Science Monitor) War and its problems are never far from Jafar Ghazi’s family....

by Scott Peterson

By number, Christians overrepresented in Congress

(The Christian Science Monitor) Even as the percentage of Americans who claim no religious identification has risen to nearly a quarter of the population, 91 percent of representative...

by David Iaconangelo and Francine Kiefer

People

Ibrahim Nseir, pastor in Aleppo, works to be a 'sign of hope'

Ibrahim Nseir was chatting at a Beirut hotel in late November with others attending a gathering of Protestant leaders from around the Middle East and beyond when a call came from his wife in Aleppo, Syria....

by Doreen Martens

People