by Marium Mohiuddin
“You have to come and help me right now!” he said. All I could think was “it’s 4 a.m., and there’s no way I can sneak out.” My parents would kill me. Despite being a senior in college...
by Sparrow Etter Carlson
I write this now with my hand on my heart, and here it will remain. For what follows is about the precious people within our midst who are treated as ex-humans in our society and...
by Mohammed Jibriel
I recently learned about the concept of moral injury, which describes the profound psychological, behavioral, social, and spiritual distress that...
by Zack Ritter
“All 40,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza are terrorists,” she said as we were eating cookies, standing around the flickering flames at Shabbat services. I was...
by Kay Lindahl
What is a beloved community? How do we become a beloved community? For the past four years our church has been intentional about engaging with these questions. This is the story of our journey so far…
by Diana Butler Bass
Here in the labyrinth, I struggle to find words to describe what I feel. Up on the mountaintop, I knew the language to describe God: majestic, transcendent, all-powerful, heavenly Father, Lord, and King. In this vocabulary, God remains stubbornly located in a few select places, mostly in external realms above or beyond: heaven, the church, doctrine, or the sacraments.
by Brie Loskota
We are in a period of flux, a period of rapid and continuous change, where the old order is being torn down, where people are disaffiliating from groups, and where institutional life is being stressed and stretched.
by Bud Heckman
Researchers tell us one of the most important assessments made by young people in sizing up any faith is “authenticity.” They are discerning consumers in a marketplace of ideas. Does this tradition/scripture/institution/leader/group appear authentic? One mark of authenticity is its vitality. Is it “vital” in the sense that it has relevance to the ways of the very diverse world we all now live in? It must pass a sniff test.
by Marcus Braybrooke
Michael Servetus, who wrote for Jews and Muslims as well as Christians, has been called by Jerome Friedman, “a prophet of interfaith dialogue.” He was a man of prodigious intellect, a scientist and a free-thinking theologian
by Jonathan Homrighausen
I stood in front of the Ark of the Covenant, holding my incense while I gazed on the golden wings of the cherubim. No, I am not starring in a remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I was inside The Tabernacle Experience, an interactive re-enactment of the Tabernacle which the Israelites built in the desert on their journey from Egypt to Canaan.
by David Parks-Ramage
Christian Koan Groups rely on a spiritual tool discovered in China through the development of Ch’an Buddhism. Koans are dialogs between Ch’an masters and their students, found helpful in leading students to a perception of life as it is rather than as it is imagined, hoped or wished to be. An example of a koan is Zhaozhou’s Dog:
by David Parks-Ramage
Following his baptism in the Jordan River and his time in the wilderness Jesus emerges into his ministry. His first words? “The time is come. The Realm of God is near.” You can almost feel it in Jesus’ words, finding fulfillment in your hearing. It is here. Now. Present. There is nowhere to look, no far off and away to get to. God is present here, in life. That is the good news.
by S. Brent Plate
I just finished walking 750 kilometers (470 miles) along the Camino de Santiago. This is an ancient pilgrimage with roots going back over a millennium and was one of the three most important Christian pilgrimages in medieval Europe, alongside those to Jerusalem and Rome.
The intersection of citizenship and immigration is finally coming to the fore in national conversations. President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union message forcefully addressed immigration. On its heels came the Group of Six’s immigration reform bill. Pieces in The New York Times and The Nation, respectively on immigration and workers’ rights and deportation and detention halts, stand out as worthy markers.
