Church
March 26, Lent 5A, (John 11:1-45)
Martha hears Jesus’ promise, but she has a brother whose body is starting to decay.
March 19, Lent 4A (John 9:1-41)
The light of the world illumines those who are open but is opaque to those who claim powerful position.
Learning from the Passover Seder without co-opting it
What wisdom can Christians find in Jesus’ meal-gathering around a religious holiday of his people?
Smashing statues
Iconoclasm isn’t just an expression of anger. It’s how we try to make new worlds.
Michelle Huneven’s homage to church life
A novel posing as a memoir that is really a sympathetic comedy
The transfiguration of Larissa
When my parishioner returned to church, she seemed to have crossed a threshold that revealed her true self.
The skin of Christ
The church is a body: scarred and punctured but feeling its way through the world.
The scandal of the anti-intellectual mind
Why are so many Christians opposed to science and captivated by conspiracy theories?
Becoming a people together
Gordon Lathrop roots his case for in-person worship in scripture and Lutheran tradition.
February 12, Ep6A (1 Corinthians 3:1-9)
If God gives growth and growth means change, the implications are broad.
Reclaiming the E word
Evangelism has become a dirty word among progressive Christians. But don’t we have good news to share?
The little engine that needed collaborators
Clergy burnout happens when churches expect pastors to do everything and pastors oblige.
February 5, Ep5A (Isaiah 58:1-12)
Ritual and justice don’t exist in a push-pull relationship.
David Bentley Hart’s apocalyptic view of tradition
Hart believes that John Henry Newman and those quick to invoke him rely too much on a gaze backward into the past.
Pope Benedict’s complicated legacy
Both his strengths and his failings are distinctly Catholic.
The uncomfortable truth about Hillcrest
How missionary work can create the conditions for child abuse to thrive unchecked
Monday night meal plan
My church offered college students weekly fellowship.
It turns out they needed the food, too.
The prophetic church in Ortega’s Nicaragua
One alarming aspect of the onetime revolutionary leader’s authoritarian turn has been the persecution of religious leaders.
Our living waters are struggling to breathe
River baptisms are becoming a casualty of polluted waters.
Church vs. injustice, not church vs. state
Ilsup Ahn believes that a different conception of church could have stopped, among other things, housing segregation.