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July 13, 2022

Volume 139, Issue #14
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Features

Where our deep sadness and the world’s deep hunger meet

Sometimes vocation springs not from joy but from trauma and grief.

by Deanna A. Thompson

What I left out of my mother’s funeral sermon

I told the truth about her but not the whole truth.

by L. Roger Owens

Black men I’ve mourned

I’ve preached more than 800 funeral sermons. Many of these deaths have marked me.

by Gary V. Simpson

Sidebar

My approach to funeral sermons

It’s not about me—it’s about God and the deceased.

by Gary V. Simpson

Preaching in the valley of actual death

My task at funerals is to share the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

by Thomas R. Steagald

Interviews

Encountering the sacred Black feminine

“God’s social location is nowhere near women or Black people. I had to start looking for an image of the Divine that can speak to that.”

Cassidy Hall interviews Christena Cleveland

Feeling US history

School districts and legislatures aren’t just challenging textbooks and curricula. They’re challenging feelings.

by Amy Frykholm

Books

We need to talk about climate change

Scientist Katharine Hayhoe recommends focusing on common ground and hope.

by Jeannine Marie Pitas

Maggie Nelson finds freedom in the emphatic middle

Her new essay collection examines how Americans thread the needle between care and constraint.

by Richard Rosengarten

How Christena Cleveland walked away from “whitemalegod”

The social psychologist went on a revolutionary pilgrimage in search of the sacred Black feminine.

by Denise Rector

Reckoning with the careless ableism of the church

Amy Kenny’s call for disability justice leads with righteous anger but offers grace.

by Elizabeth Felicetti

The world through Niebuhr’s eyes

38 scholars weigh in on Reinhold Niebuhr’s life and times, his allies and adversaries, his theology and ethics

by Barbara Ridpath

Departments

Faith Matters

Underlined words

As it tells the story of our time, the Century makes readers and writers of us all.

by Stephanie Paulsell

Screen Time

When I think of Downton Abbey, I think of the costumes

Beautiful objects in a sea of inequity and decadence

by Kathryn Reklis

On Art

Adam 1 (detail), Adam Organs (detail), Adam 2 (detail), by Gillian Genser

“It is not without irony,” says sculptor Gillian Genser, “that the creation of this piece was to be my demise.” When she set out to depict the story of the first man, Adam, Genser sought to reimagine the man who should have been....

art selection and comment by Lil Copan

From the Editors

Alleviating domestic child poverty is not complicated

We were just doing it, and then we stopped.
First Words

The Second Amendment has been shaped into an altar

Cowardly politicians sacrifice the helpless upon it.

by Peter W. Marty

News

Lawsuit against faith-based schools continues gaining steam

A class action lawsuit accusing the US Department of Education of wrongly allowing discrimination against LGBTQ students at faith-based schools has grown in number of participants and in general support over the past 15 months....

by Emily Cousins

First transgender bishop in ELCA resigns

The first transgender bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Ameri­ca has resigned amid criticism over the decision to remove the pastor of a Latino congregation on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe in December....

by Alejandra Molina

Southern Baptists change direction on sexual abuse after years of delay 

In summer 2008, Morris Chapman stood before a gathering of thousands of Southern Baptists in Indianapolis for their annual meeting and denounced the evil of sexual abuse....

by Bob Smietana

Adviser to Pope Francis calls resignation rumors ‘cheap soap opera’

In an interview published June 8, Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Mara­diaga dismissed rumors circulating in the media that the pope might resign as nothing more than “a cheap soap opera.”...

by Claire Giangravé

Flint pastor builds laundromat to counter ‘hygiene poverty’

The nearest laundry facility to Good Church is technically just under three and a half miles away, but lead pastor Leo Robinson II rounds up....

by Kate Stockrahm

People

South African scholar Jerry Pillay elected WCC general secretary

On June 17, South African scholar Jerry Pillay was elected general secretary of the World Council of Churches during the central committee’s first in-person meeting since 2018....

by Dawn Araujo-Hawkins

People

Anthony Poggo named Anglican Communion secretary general

Anthony Poggo, a South Sudanese bishop who was forced with his family into exile before he was a year old, has been named as the next secretary general of the Anglican Communion....
People

International disability advocate Sarah Newland Martin dies at 75

Sarah Newland Martin, an internationally recognized disability advocate and leader in the Jamai­ca Baptist Union, died June 8 following complications related to surgery. She was 75....

by Dawn Araujo-Hawkins

Lectionary

July 31, Ordinary 18C (Luke 12:13-21) 

The lilies of the field don’t have student loans.

by Jessica Mesman

July 24, Ordinary 17C (Hosea 1:2-10)

If Hosea is a factual account, it’s horrific. If it’s an allegory, it’s still horrific.

by Jessica Mesman

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