(OPINION) If I asked you to name the most repeated commandment in the whole Bible, you might offer up any one of various scriptural admonitions: Love the Lord with all your heart. Love your neighbor as yourself. Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. Thou shalt not kill. But the real answer might surprise you.
Read MoreThis week’s Weekend Plug-in explains the Trump factor in the 2024 GOP presidential race. Plus, as always, catch up on all the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
Read More(ANALYSIS) With the world around us getting better, why do so many faith-based films insist the world is getting worse? And what does that say about the religious right in America?
Read More(OPINION) I’ve been tracking environmental issues for more than six decades. Centuries before I was born, Thomas Malthus warned that human exponential growth would impact resources. Some heeded his warning. Many economists disregarded it. Technological optimists pushed back, emphasizing instead “human creativity expressed through markets.”
Read More(OPINION) Faith isn’t necessarily easy. It’s work. If it does come easily, it’s possibly not real faith but only self-delusion or vapidity masquerading as faith. I’ve been considering this again in light of developments in my family and my personal journey.
Read More(OPINION) The reason we persevere is because we know God has called us to do what is right. And we know that with God, we can overcome whatever difficulties, injustices or troubles we face. So when confronted with the choice of giving up or pushing through, remember to keep going.
Read More(ANALYSIS) The Sparkle Creed was circulated in 2021 by the Rev. Rachel Small Stokes of Immanuel United Church of Christ in Louisville, Kentucky. A Shower of Stoles website biography notes that she was raised United Methodist, served as a missionary in that denomination and trained for the ministry.
Read More(OPINION) On Aug. 16, 1967, in Atlanta during his annual report to the 11th Convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Martin Luther King Jr. entitled his speech “Where Do We Go From Here?” and thus the question I have for ministers, Black and White today.
Read More(OPINION) For the past decade, a handful of megachurches have dominated worship music. They include Elevation Church, Australia-based Hillsong, and California’s Bethel Church — all churches that have had their share of scandal and controversy. Still, most worship leaders have carefully compartmentalized the controversy and have continued to use their songs — and, in effect, financially support these churches.
Read More(OPINION) Why do U.S. power-brokers, and journalists themselves, pay little or no heed to ardent pronouncements by the World Council of Churches and the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA?
Read More(OPINION) Lost amid the news of Southern Baptist Convention’s disfellowshipping of Saddleback Church was that of a much smaller Kentucky church — Louisville’s Fern Creek Baptist, with a Sunday attendance of 150, where the Rev. Linda Barnes Popham has served as lead pastor for 30 years..
Read More(OPINION) On this day in history, July 10, 1965, the Rolling Stones topped U.S. charts for the first time with the single “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” It signaled a shift. Beatlemania hit the U.S. in early 1964. The Beatles were playful, upbeat. The Stones were dark, restless. “Satisfaction” struck a chord. It resonated with what C.S. Lewis called “a new approach to life.” Discontentment.
Read MoreThis week’s Weekend Plug-in starts with a major story that receives too little attention. Plus, as always, catch up on all the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
Read More(ANALYSIS) Minneapolis recently became the first major U.S. city to allow the “adhan,” or Muslim call to prayer, to be broadcast from mosques five times a day. In April 2023, the Minneapolis City Council unanimously approved a change to the city’s sound ordinance, effectively eliminating time constraints that previously prevented the pre-dawn and evening prayer calls from being broadcast.
Read More(ANALYSIS) Religion in 21st century America has become an enclave for people who have done everything “right.” They have college degrees and marriages and children and middle-class incomes. For those who don’t check all those boxes, religion is just not for them.
Read More(OPINION) Many religious traditions value silence as a space where a supreme power might be experienced. “I will come to you in the silence,” promises God at the outset of David Hass’ hymn, “You Are Mine,” sung in both Catholic and Protestant churches. Some religious folk might agree with Beckett that nothing is the ultimate reality.
Read More(OPINION) I think the main problem with Christianity specifically and the whole world generally is that many people seem not to ever have comprehended how radically and unconditionally they are loved by the Lord. Musing afterward on my conversations with a young woman, it struck me we’d both arrived at our different images of God from our differing experiences with our earthly fathers.
Read More(OPINION) On the age-old but ever-debated topic of whether Jesus had brothers and sisters, The Guy would answer that — as is often the case — it depends on what church is fielding the question. From ancient times, Catholicism and Orthodoxy have said no. But virtually all Protestants since Martin Luther’s time have said yes.
Read More(ANALYSIS) A new report suggests that the Tatmadaw continues to target religious and ethnic communities. This comes years after the Tatmadaw specifically targeted the Rohingya for annihilation.
Read More(OPINION) I don’t take abortion any more lightly than I take lightly the indiscriminate nature of promiscuity that appears to have infested our culture. But I still cannot find it in me, or in Holy Scripture, to support a trigger law or pretend that the removal of 12 cells not a nanosecond following conception could justly be deemed “murder.” Yet anti-abortion adherents often tout the slogan “abortion is murder.”
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