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March 9, 2022

Volume 139, Issue #5
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Features

Interviews

Translation as an act of love

“Dolly Parton says she is singing for everybody. I am trying to translate for everybody.”

Amy Frykholm interviews Carmen Acevedo Butcher

First Person

Iona was once the beating heart of Celtic Christianity

The only thing it lacked was a desert—so the monks imagined one.

by Kenneth Steven

First Person

The Didache’s ancient wisdom on baptism lands differently in a megadrought

Faith and water conservation in the desert

by Kay Lynn Northcutt

First Person

After my son died, I went looking for God in the desert

If anything had an honest answer, it would be the canyon’s cool indifference and heartbreaking beauty.

by Belden C. Lane

Interviews

One woman’s mission to create a thru-hiking trail in Mexico

“The most magical part of thru-hiking is the community that we share.”

Soren Frykholm interviews Zelzin Aketzalli

The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill is conspicuously silent on race

Mark Driscoll’s megachurch radicalized White men by weaponizing the White nuclear family.

by Sara Williams

Books

At Tara Isabella Burton’s fictional boarding school, the hunger for transcendence gets dark

A tale of beauty, religion, and how easy it is to exploit them

by Benjamin J. Dueholm

Why go to church camp?

Jacob Sorenson has written a wise, informative, and practical study of the benefits of Christian summer camps.

by Meggan Manlove

Grace Ji-Sun Kim’s theology of visibility

When Asian American women are rendered invisible, the whole church is diminished.

by Susan Willhauck

The real Jane Roe

Joshua Prager’s deep reporting reveals Norma McCorvey as never before.

by Chris Hammer

Departments

First Words

Jesus turned his public humiliation into solidarity

He turned it into love and care for humiliated others.

by Peter W. Marty

Peru needs its Lord of Miracles now more than ever

Amid political chaos, a church mural from 1746 grounds Peruvian faith and national identity.

by Philip Jenkins

On Art

The Burning Bush, Icon of the Lilies of the Field, and What Is It Like? by Elizabeth Wrightman

There’s a kind of visual poetry in Elizabeth Wrightman’s paintings—swatches of color, commentary, deep emotion, engagement. Sometimes this engagement is word with image, sometimes object and color with design....

art selection and comment by Lil Copan

Faith Matters

Two tough questions at the coffee shop

Why are you still in the church? Why bother with Christianity at all?

by Samuel Wells

From the Editors

Pfizer didn’t create its COVID vaccine alone

Yet it’s holding tight to its life-saving information—and its record-breaking profits.

News

Immigration reform no longer unites faith groups

Back in 2013, creating a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States was the rare issue that virtually all major religious groups in the United States could agree on....

by Jack Jenkins

HBCUs remain unshaken after recent bomb threats

Domestic terrorists who recently threatened to bomb nearly 20 historically Black colleges and universities utterly failed if their goal was to shake student commitment to their schools and to each other, institutional leaders said on February 8....

by Jeff Brumley

Conservative PAC sues Biden administration, targets liberal Catholics

The conservative political action committee CatholicVote is suing President Joe Biden’s administration in an effort to secure records of communication between the US government and Catholic groups in regard to both humanitarian aid at the southern...

by Jack Jenkins

As workers seek to unionize, some clergy are filling a crucial role

Richard Smith, an Episcopal priest, has been working to improve the lot of workers in California long enough to have protested alongside Cesar Chavez in the 1970s during the lettuce strike, when Smith was a Jesuit seminarian....

by Alejandra Molina

Episcopal priest helps plan interfaith prayer house in Mongolia

It might seem far-fetched for an Episcopal priest from Little Rock, Arkansas, to be working on an interfaith prayer house in Mongolia, a mostly Buddhist country....

by Egan Millard

People

Willie McLaurin named interim leader of SBC's executive committee

The Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee has appointed Willie McLaurin to serve as interim presi­dent and CEO, marking the first time that any entity of the predominantly White denomination has been headed by a Black person....

by Adelle M. Banks

People

Eritrean Orthodox patriarch dies in detention

Abune Antonios, a confined Eritrean Orthodox Church patriarch and the longest-serving prisoner of conscience in the Horn of Africa, died on February 9 at age 94....

by Fredrick Nzwili

People

Tania Tetlow to be first woman president of Fordham University

Tania Tetlow has been unanimously elected the next president of Ford­ham University. Tet­low will be the first woman and the first layperson to lead the 181-year-old Jesuit institution....

by Dawn Araujo-Hawkins

Lectionary

March 27, Lent 4C (Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32)

Sometimes anger is a window into what needs to be mended and healed.

by Mihee Kim-Kort

March 20, Lent 3C (Luke 13:1-9)

Jesus obliterates our internal ledgers and points us to repentance.

by Mihee Kim-Kort

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