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1. Because the future church isn’t going to lead itself: Sojourners is working around the clock to make sure that those who will be leading the church in 2050 are equipped today. Every year, we print hundreds of articles by 10 yearlong interns and our cohort of 17 Emerging Voices, helping them find their voice and analyze issues of justice. Who do you want leading the church that your children, or your grandchildren, will be attending? We thought so: leaders who apply justice to faith are crucial for the next generation.
You’ll always find what you’re looking for. Unless, of course, you’re Mary and Joseph, looking for your preteen son on your road trip home from the Passover festival in Jerusalem.
This is the scene found in Luke 2:41-52, the Gospel reading for the final Sunday of 2015. Mary, Joseph, and Jesus joined other travelers on their annual pilgrimage. At the end of the festival they begin their trek home. Mary and Joseph assume Jesus is behaving like a typical preteen, avoiding his parents and traveling with other friends and relatives. But after three days of searching for their twelve-year-old son, Mary and Joseph find him back in Jerusalem, talking with the teachers at the temple.
This is a story about searching for Jesus. This is a story about finding what you’re looking for.
Why and how did Greg’s post resonate with so many people on the meme’s second time around the Internet? Why did it take so much darkness before something profoundly positive happened? I think I come back to two powerful resources available to us as a church, if we have the courage to embrace it.
A religious summit last held more than 1,200 years ago suddenly risks being downgraded or postponed because of Syria’s four-year civil war. This unexpected twist has come as the world’s Orthodox churches, the second-largest ecclesial family in Christianity, were supposed to be only months away from their first major council since 787.
Now it is no longer clear when or where the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, a summit first proposed at least as far back as 1961 and provisionally scheduled for May in Istanbul, will be held.
With its traditional icons and complex liturgies, Orthodox Christianity can seem like an unchanging remnant of a long-lost era. But it lives very much in today’s world and its 14 autocephalous (independent) member churches can be wrapped up in its politics and subject to its pressures.
Former president Jimmy Carter was late to his Bible study class Sunday morning, something he said never happens as he walked up to the front of the sanctuary. There he received hugs from those who likely already knew why.
His service started with an announcement of something Carter’s voice indicated was weighing heavily on his heart.
His grandson, Jeremy Carter, who had spent Thanksgiving with him just weeks ago, died suddenly in the night.
We are in Cuba. More specifically, 14 members of Witness Against Torture are in the Department of Guantanamo, at the Mirador overlooking the U.S. Naval Base. We are being hosted by the staff of La Gobernadora restaurant and lounge. From the lookout, we can see the U.S. base that has occupied more than 100 square kilometers of Cuban land for more than a century. We can orient ourselves toward the camps where the Abd and Mohammed and their brethren are being held. We are camping. We are praying. We are acting. We are transforming a random international tourist spot — one more site to click photos, drink a beer, and move on from before heading to the beaches — into a place to honor and connect and extend ourselves toward the men our nation has demonized and then forgotten.
I often find that the general public really has no idea that teachers are allowed to teach about the world’s religions in public schools. There’s a clear disconnect between what educators are doing and what the public thinks they can do. Then you add to this that people really don’t know that much about religions in general. The idea that a kid’s going to get converted by trying to write calligraphy, even if it’s a statement of faith — I mean, that seems like, really?
“Daddy, he’s real.”
She had seen computer-generated Yoda from the prequels, but upon seeing the actual puppet in Empire Strikes Back, Simon Pegg’s daughter couldn’t contain her wonder. When Pegg (who has a cameo in the new film) related this story to J.J. Abrams, the director of The Force Awakens used it to convince Disney of his plan to build a huge number of real sets, puppets and costumes.
Indeed, Abrams now introduces Pegg as “the guy whose daughter saved Star Wars.”
And saved it is. In addition to record-breaking ticket sales, the film has received overwhelmingly positive reviews. Abrams has put us back in the reality of Star Wars, a familiar world in which people actually live.
Rejecting fearmongering about the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the U.S., about 100 evangelical leaders are calling on Christians and their churches “to support ministries showing the love of Jesus to the most vulnerable, those in desperate need, and the hurting.”
“Our statement is to change a narrative of fear and instead focus on faith and compassion,” said Ed Stetzer, executive director of LifeWay Research in Nashville, Tenn. “Our desire is not to resettle everybody in another country. When a house is burning down, we need to put out the fire and rescue people fleeing the fire.”
Dr. Larycia Hawkins, the Wheaton College professor suspended this week for public comments suggesting Muslims and Christians worship the "same god," released a statement Dec. 17 elaborating her position and her remarks to the press on Dec 16. The full text of her statement is below. The college also released a statement explaining its actions on Dec. 16, and can be read here.