Christine A. Scheller Laughter is Sacred Space: The Not-So-Typical Journey of a Mennonite Actor. Herald Press ...

Edith Black The Mark of True Faith COMING TO know Christ can be likened to culture shock, when all the old eg ...

As we journey forward in the aftermath of this terrible tragedy, may we be confronted and comforted by the reality of God’s abundant grace. I am tormented by what took place at ...

Martin L. Smith Reflections on the Revised Common Lectionary, Cycle C HOW SHALL WE engage with scripture thro ...

Andrew Wilkes The Economy for Desire: Christianity and Capitalism in a Postmodern World. Baker Academic DANIE ...

Throughout the United States, people of faith are on the front lines of the effort to replace life-without-parole sentences for children with age-appropriate accountability measures that focus on rehabilitatio ...

It's a marvel that people hate vehemently enough to end their lives and those of complete strangers as a solution to their actual suffering or perceptions of injustice. It's expensive to make this me ...

Amy Sullivan Faith, Doubt, and Other Lines I've Crossed: Walking with the Unknown God. Jericho Books. JU ...

Gareth Higgins We shouldn't really expect the Oscars to grasp the point of history, though this year the films nominated for Best Pi ...

Richard Rohr Real interior silence, not just the absence of noise, is a foundational spiritual discipline. So why are we so resistant to ...

While I am certain evil exists I’m not sure it’s in the form of a red man with horns and pitchfork and tail. That image that terrified me as a child is now a bit too cartoon-y for me to take seriously. ...

For many centuries Christmas Day worshippers have been hearing these words as their New Testament reading: “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all” (Titus 2:11). Grace, everyone used to k ...

Julie Polter I Told My Soul to Sing: Finding God with Emily Dickinson by Kristin LeMay / Grace and Mercy by Jonathan Butler / Gather at t ...

Jim Wallis Attitudes toward capital punishment are changing, including among conservatives. I AM AGAINST the ...

I cannot think that you don't sound or breathe weep or grieve I cannot think that you don't sound or breathe weep or grieve I will not think that you don ...

Since there was nothing within myself that could fix me, where could I look? Where could I turn? Where can any of us look? “The prevailing view in much of contemporary Christia ...

Reentry is often a pain in my ass. It's true. I get a chance to get away from it all, to spend some time with friends and begin to unwind and it's glorious. But then there's the return trip ho ...

BAHIR DAR, Ethiopia — When I posted the photograph of a beautiful little Ethiopian girl holding a daisy a few days ago, my friend and fellow God's Politics blogger Christian Piatt responded on Twitter wit ...

Prolific author Max Lucado talked to Religion News Service about grace, the topic of his 29th book, and answered a range of questions from people who follow RNS on Twitter. Lucado, 57, is the minister of preac ...

I experience the gospel to be true even when I can’t believe it. And honestly sometimes I believe the gospel even when I don’t experience it. And I suggest to you today that this is why we have and even why w ...

Stacey Schwenker Ashamed No More: A Pastor's Journey Through Sex Addiction. IVP Books PASTOR T.C. RYAN s ...

My sons, ages 13 and 10, spend two evenings each week on a golf course because I parent out of my own personal brokenness, which includes an acute awareness of life experiences and skills I was not exposed to ...

I recognize that with each passing day we are deeply connected within the company of strangers, for they depend upon us, and we deeply depend upon them. This is, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, the “single ga ...

"I am a flawed person. I should not be allowed to be here talking to you. But you know what? That's the God we're dealing with, people." ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber to the 2012 ELCA Youth Gathering ...

The Rev. Andrena Ingram is currently the only known Lutheran ordained pastor living openly with HIV. Her husband's death from an AIDS-related illness, and the shame that he felt, inspired the pastor to be open about her own diagnosis with HIV. She ...

Sometimes we have to get out of the way and let the Spirit do his thing — that requires intentionality. Other times we’ll have to choose to love or choose to forgive or choose to speak the truth, and as we con ...

Widening the already vast chasms created by the culture wars won’t heal deep wounds in the body. As we have faithfully argue, our God and our interpretations of the Bible ought to make church a wide and wonder ...

Herod was trapped in his own story and it feels to me like it’s a story that tortured him, one from which he felt there was no escape. When our own little stories begin to feel self-contained and inescapable, ...

Ubuntu. It was the secret of how Mandela reconciled his people to the violent criminals of their cruel white oppressors in post-apartheid South Africa. Co-existence was vital, not only to the peace of the nati ...

Good and gracious God: Today, like the rest of the world, when I woke I wrapped myself in myths. They are comfortable and warming in what can seem like such a cold world. Yes, they are old and worn but they ...

If you believe that all non-Christians are going to hell, then that means that not only would Hitler be there, but so would most of his victims.How could it be just for someone to go from the fires of Auschwit ...

It’s such an easy thing to do, To overshoot and lose touch with You; Surrounded by everyday anxieties,... It’s such an easy thing to do, To overshoot and lose touch with You; ...

I knew I was cynical, but I didn’t know I was about to die from my cynicism. Then I went to the Wild Goose Festival. I wasn’t healed there. Just the opposite. I was playfully wooed to mourn the passing of my y ...

Galatians 3:22: Is it the faith of Jesus or faith in Jesus that’s the key? The following is an excerpt from Banned Questions About Jesus , edited by the author: Galatians ...

It was remarkable to me, with a little bit of healthy distance, how similar the two situations ended up being. Though in one, the fit was about mourning the loss of some ideal that might have been (but probabl ...

Howling wind whipped my long, unruly hair in penitent lashes across my face as I stood in the rain, staring at the churning sea at the northernmost point of Ireland. This place, Malin Head in County Donegal, f ...

40 Ideas for Keeping a Holy Lent from House for All Sinners and Saints church in Colorado, that God's Politics contributor Nadia Bolz-Weber serves. 40 Ideas for Keeping a H ...

In 2004 I met then-State Sen. Barack Obama at Café Baci, a small coffee shop in Chicago. We spoke for more than an hour. He came alone. No handler, no spokesperson, no notes. He seemed to be relaxed and at eas ...

Once in a while, we have an opportunity to catch a glimpse of grace in the middle of the worst humanity has to offer. And it’s in those moments that I tend to recognize God in our midst. ...

"You and I have the power to change someone’s day. And so I am going to challenge you, on this Valentine’s Day, to not only tell family members you love them, but also others whom you care for." ...

The Bible teaches us: “A good name is better than precious ointment and the day of death, than the day of birth.” (Ecclesiastes 7:1) On this day, as the world morns the unexpected passing of legendary singer W ...

Governor Brewer’s demeanor toward the president was inappropriate. However, the deeper question is why would this woman think it is appropriate to put her finger in anyone’s face, president or not? ...

Everybody needs forgiveness. But it’s hard to face that. It feels threatening, like an accusation. So we tend to get defensive and start justifying ourselves, rather than seeing the one we’ve hurt. ...

That baby Jesus will be many more things as his life, death, resurrection and eternity continues but here in the straw, and central to everything he will do and be, he is a symbol of grace. This is what Christ ...

For a story about conversion, death is a necessary character. It is in the finality of death that our eyes are able to readjust and see the horizon of our life and being. It is wi ...

Children remind us what faith is. When they overflow with joy and excitement it is contagious. When I imagine Jesus telling his disciples, “Let the little children come to me,” I ...

“I wear the chain I forge in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free-will, and of my own free-will I wore it.” The spect ...

An ebenezer is a reminder. It tells the story of God’s faithfulness and our repentance. It is a marker for transformation and conversion. “Marley was dead, to begin with.”   ...

Rob Bell, 41, the founding pastor of Mars Hill church in western Michigan, bid adieu to his congregation in a 5,000-word epistle about grace and peace, which he preached the Sunday before Christmas to thousand ...

We’re a house of hospitality when we learn to wait, when we learn to open ourselves to grace, when we let love transform us, one relationship at a time. Before Leah and I moved to ...