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October 10, 2021

Volume 138, Issue #20
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Features

Critical Essay

Have Steve Jobs and his gadgets made us less human?

It’s possible he created more problems than he solved.

by A. Trevor Sutton

Interviews

Living and leading from our mortality

“Yearning for life is a part of what it means to be human.”

a conversation between Kate Bowler and Luke A. Powery

First Person

Vocational gluttony

Finding a through line for my many pursuits

by L. Roger Owens

Readers Write

Clock: Essays by readers

We gave our readers a one-word writing prompt: “Clock.”

How a Serbian Orthodox congregation in Kansas City offers hospitality beyond the liturgy

At Thelma’s Kitchen, every table is a holy table and every guest a living icon.

by Michael Plekon

Books

When Mennonites were settlers

John Eicher’s history exposes European Mennonite complicity in Native dispossession.

by Isaac S. Villegas

An evangelical Christian argument for reparations

Duke Kwon and Gregory Thompson want to talk about theft.

by Dave Allen

Literature in the wild

Nick Ripatrazone invites us into the wilderness with some of his favorite writers.

by Elizabeth Felicetti

Departments

On Art

Well (stereoscopic installation, loop, 2017), by Arent Weevers

Arent Weevers is a Dutch pastor and grief counselor as well as an artist, and the images he creates speak to deep experiences of loss and vulnerability. He comments on his work:...

art selection and comment by Aaron Rosen

First Words

Who is welcome at the communion table?

Maybe the grace experienced in the sacrament precedes belief.

by Peter W. Marty

Screen Time

Watching The Green Knight and Nine Days on the big screen

Both movies made me grateful for directors with risky, new visions—and the space to enjoy them.

by Kathryn Reklis

Faith Matters

A psalm of waiting as the pandemic continues

All plans feel like grass withering in the sun these days.

by Brian Bantum

From the Editors

Whose religious freedom is at stake with Texas’s new abortion law?

Some rabbis are claiming that SB 8 violates the obligations of their faith.

News

People

Myanmar military releases Buddhist nationalist monk Wirathu from prison

A nationalist Buddhist monk in Myan­mar notorious for anti-Muslim remarks was freed from prison on September 6 after charges that he tried to stir up disaffection against the country’s previous civilian government were dropped....

by Grant Peck

New Bible translation for Native American readers 

It’s a Bible verse familiar to many Christians—and even to many non-Christians, who have seen it on billboards and T-shirts or scrawled across eye black under football players’ helmets....

by Emily McFarlan Miller

Police clash with opponents of Serbian church in Montenegro

Metropolitan Joanikije, the new head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro, was inaugurated in the state’s old capital on September 5 amid clashes between police and protesters who oppose continued Serb influence in the tiny Balkan nation.<...

by Predrag Milic

Afghanistan’s last Jew leaves after Taliban takeover

The last member of Afghanistan’s Jewish community has left the country. Zebulon Simentov—who lived in a dilapidated synagogue in Kabul, kept kosher, and prayed in Hebrew—endured decades of war as the country’s...

by Muhammad Farooq and Joseph Krauss

Vatican won’t say if women can vote in 2023 church meeting

Vatican officials declined to say if women would be able to vote on concrete proposals about the future of the Catholic Church at the end of a two-year consultation of laypeople that begins in October....

by Nicole Winfield

Twenty years later, ‘In Christ Alone’ still inspires millions to sing

The melody that changed Keith Getty’s life was first scratched out on the back of an electric bill in a humble flat in Northern Ireland. This isn’t great, he thought at the time....

by Bob Smietana

People

Influential Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong dies at 90

John Shelby Spong, an Episcopal bishop and a best-selling author known for his progressive theology and his support of LGBTQ clergy, has died. He was 90....

by Bob Smietana

People

Dillard University professor Mona Lisa Saloy named poet laureate in Louisiana

Mona Lisa Saloy, an English professor at the historically Black, United Methodist and United Church of Christ affiliated Dillard University, has been named poet laureate for the state of Louisiana....

by Dawn Araujo-Hawkins

People

Stefan Wyszyński and Elżbieta Róża Czacka beatified in Poland

Two revered figures of the Polish Catholic Church were beatified on September 12—a cardinal who led the Polish church’s re­sistance to communism and a blind nun who devoted her life to helping others who couldn’t see....

by Vanessa Gera

Lectionary

October 24, Ordinary 30B (Mark 10:46-52)

More than a miracle story, this is a story of a call.

by Timothy Adkins-Jones

October 17, Ordinary 29B (Job 38:1-7, 34-41)

I don’t want to hear any more from Eliphaz, Bildad, or Zophar. I want answers.

by Timothy Adkins-Jones

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