Church
Keep swinging for the fences
My decades of church life have been full of the stuff one might expect from a place that promises God and only sometimes delivers.
What White Christians did to Black Charlotte
Greg Jarrell explores how one congregation in his city took advantage of racist urban renewal policies.
Divine silence
A Quaker colleague taught me how stillness exercises agency, how it acts upon worshipers.
Ancestral blessings
I attended a talk by a pastor who begins services by asking, “Who do you bring into worship with you?”
Cecil Williams kept his ear to the ground
The longtime pastor of Glide Memorial Church was involved in nearly every major social justice movement in the Bay Area for 60 years.
Mourning prayer
The church’s old cork board reminded me that our heartbroken cries go directly to God.
Conspiracies of goodness
When I fear a dystopian future, I hold on to stories of everyday resistance.
The gift of interfaith difference
At the Muslim community center, I felt the tension of our divergence. But I also sensed gratitude.
Why church marketing won’t work with Gen Z
Equity requires people with power giving some of it up. What if we applied this principle to young adult ministry?
The meaning of a sermon
I’m sure these faithful people have heard all of these words before. So what is my task here?
The prophetic ministry of the pulpit
Jonathan Augustine makes a strong case for preaching that is both divinely inspired and socially determined.
Inside a church’s implosion
Eliza Griswold profiles a progressive evangelical church that sought to do things differently but fell prey to the usual problems.
Written by the oppressor, sung by the oppressed
James Walvin traces a beloved American hymn on its winding journey across racial divisions through the centuries.
How can a congregation change its culture?
It helps to focus less on structure and instead envision the church as an organism.
Which church is dying?
The church of empire might be. But I’m not ready to call time of death on the mystical body of Christ.
Women posing problems
In the gospels and in the world today, women get in the way and make the world new.
Is religion good for human flourishing?
The Global Flourishing Study is producing a dazzling amount of data to help us answer this sort of question.
The puzzle at the heart of Mormonism
Historian Richard Lyman Bushman investigates his own tradition’s most mysterious miracle.
God cares nothing for our algorithms
Embracing the random can open us up to the agitations of the Holy Spirit.