I had the privilege of teaching a pastoral theology class at Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas, last week.
I had the entire senior class: 13 young, promising, enthusiastic, veterans of church wars, and yet eager to get started.
The new movie “12 Years a Slave” may depict a bygone era in American history, but religious leaders hope it might spark increased attention about present-day race relations.
Yoder
Can a bad person be a good theologian?
All of us fall short of our ideals, of course. But there is a common-sense expectation that religious professionals should try to behave as they counsel others to behave. They may not be perfect, but they should not be louts or jerks.
Spong speaking to a church in England.
At 82, retired and enjoying life, Bishop John Shelby Spong doesn't have to be the liberal enfant terrible whose pronouncements for gay rights and against traditional dogmas once scandalized Christendom.
Author Malcolm Gladwell may not be known for writing on religion. His New York Times best-selling books "The Tipping Point," "Outliers," "Blink" and "What the Dog Saw" deal with the unexpected twists in social science research.
Christians in the Middle East and Africa are being slaughtered, tortured, raped, kidnapped, beheaded, and forced to flee the birthplace of Christianity. One would think this horror might be consuming the pulpits and pews of American churches. Not so. The silence has been nearly deafening. Read more at
Pope Francis says the church "cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently." (Riccardo De Luca/Associated Press)
In a lengthy, wide-ranging interview with journalists from his own Jesuit order, Pope Francis makes a number of stunningly frank comments that are likely to rattle the church and to cement his reputation as a leader more concerned with a pastoral approach than a doctrinal hard line.
On a recent trip north of the US border, Menno Media's director of development, Steve Carpenter, met some interesting people in the persons of Vern Ratzlaff of Aberdeen and Dave and Sue Neufeld of Herschel. See his comments on a blog entry here: http://bit.ly/14iVFen
Mark Marmon (right) teaches fly fishing at the Fishers of Men retreat at Camp Allen in Navasota, Texas. Photo by Emily Krueger, Camp Allen | courtesy The Episcopal Diocese of Texas
The 50 members of All Saints Episcopal Church in Hitchcock, Texas, are looking forward to December, when Mark Marmon will be ordained their priest.
One reason for the excitement? They won’t have to pay him.
Before its Aug. 20 launch, officials at Al-Jazeera America emphasized that, despite its Middle Eastern roots and ownership, the fledgling cable news network would be aimed squarely at a U.S. audience.
Guess they weren’t kidding.
Roman Catholic Archbishop Zacchaeus Okoth of the Kisumu Archdiocese and the chairperson of the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Justice and Peace Commission, said the withdrawal will breed impunity and injure human-rights protection. Photos by Fredrick Nzwili
With Kenya’s president and his deputy facing trials at the International Court of Justice in the Netherlands, parliamentarians here have voted to withdraw the country from the court.
But the Roman Catholic Church and the National Council of Churches of Kenya view the move as “misguided.”
A federal grand jury has indicted seven people, most members of a Mexican Mennonite community working with a drug cartel, accused of moving tons of pot to Colorado Springs and North Carolina.
The United Church Observer, an award-winning independent monthly magazine published for the country’s largest Protestant denomination, is revealing the results of “Imagine: Your Church in 2025.” The national survey asked readers to envision what and where their church will be when The United Church of Canada celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2025.
Egyptian Copts pray in Tahrir Square during the 2011 Egyptian protests.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams took Britain’s Christian community to task last month when he said that Western Christians need to “grow up” and stop claiming they are persecuted just because they are sometimes made to feel uncomfortable about their faith.
The backlash against Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt comes as secular forces across the Middle East are rising up in opposition to political Islam. Divisions reach from top leaders to the street.
Songwriters Keith and Kristyn Getty. Photo courtesy Getty Music
The dispute over dropping a beloved Christian song from a new Presbyterian hymnal has widened into a multi-denominational tussle, with Baptists joining the fray.
Rageh Omaar travels to the place of Muhammad's birth to retrace the footsteps of the prophet in PBS' "Life of Muhammad". Photo courtesy PBS
He’s born poor. By age 6, he’s an orphan. Two years later, he loses his grandfather. Yet he overcomes his circumstances, develops a reputation for business integrity and progressive views on marriage.
Then he becomes a prophet of God.
The portrait of the Muslim prophet, which emerges from a PBS documentary “Life of Muhammad,” may surprise some American viewers.
Manitoba social workers want parents of an orthodox Mennonite community to promise they will only spank kids on their behinds and not use objects, such as belts, as punishment.
They also want assurances that children will not be injured or left with marks on their bodies.
All photos by Noah Friedman-Rudovsky. Noah Friedman-Rudovsky also contributed reporting to this article.
For a while, the residents of Manitoba Colony thought demons were raping the town’s women. There was no other explanation. No way of explaining how a woman could wake up with blood and semen stains smeared across her sheets and no memory of the previous night. No way of explaining how another went to sleep clothed, only to wake up naked and covered by dirty fingerprints all over her body.
Nation to nation bike tour begins July 31.
This August, Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth will participate in a unique bike tour through southeastern Ontario to build bridges of understanding and respect based on a deepened understanding of their shared history.
Metaxas
Before evangelical leader Chuck Colson fell ill at a conference last year, crumbling at the podium and later dying at the hospital, it was Eric Metaxas who introduced him.
This is a typical scene Dyck encountered in the MDS clean-up. --MDS photo
Gerald Dyck talks with Darcie Janzen (MDS meal organizer for volunteers) in the MDS trailer.
Editor's Note: The response to the flood disaster in High River, Alta, has been overwhelming. Here Gerald and Lee Dyck, who spent a week there directing clean-up efforts, give a first-hand account of the their time there. Dyck is the MDS director for British Columbia.
