Monday’s bombing may have tested that bond, but it couldn’t destroy it. Marathoning may look like a solitary journey, but it’s a communal one. Like everything in life, you need plenty of people — and plenty o ...

Desmond Tutu, the former Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his battle against apartheid, has won the 2013 Templeton Prize, which is billed as the most significant ...

hereas there’s a great potential benefit in challenging, or even actively deconstructing everything from our image of God to our notion of all things supernatural or miraculous, there’s also the risk that we e ...

Nuanced or not, are Christians, especially evangelicals, perceived as being against things like peacemaking? (The Controversial figure Rob Bell has created another firestorm wit ...

At the heart of the Christian message lies the ridiculous, absurd, and even scandalous message that God is for everyone. (The Controversial figure Rob Bell has created another f ...

Why does Rob write this stuff? Whose side is he on? Yours. Mine. Ours. It's the Monday after Easter, and I couldn't think of a better day to talk about God being with us ...

Scientific inquiry and Biblical interpretation are not the same thing. So what's Rob's purpose for this chapter? (The Controversial figure Rob Bell has created another ...

In a time when egalitarianism defines nearly all relationships as the desired norm, it’s well to remember the role of mentors who maintain, purely through their own internal integrity and faithfulness, a spiri ...

My central problem with Rollins’ work is that he’s not serious enough about the problem of evil, the power of idolatrous capitalism in our world. His system is not robust enough to resist the totalizing power ...

What's it like to wrestle with the Divine One? You know, like Jacob did there in the desert one night. You can contend with God, can you not? Is God not then your enemy in some way? ...

The Editors Modern passages from Oswald Chambers' classic devotional reader My Utmost for His Highest. L ...

Martin L. Smith Reflections on the Common Lectionary, Cycle C "THIS IS THE LORD'S DOING; it is marv ...

I do feel like a disembodied voice crying in the wilderness as I struggle, like a fish swimming upstream, to believe that the Gospel is real and solid and still matters.  C.S. Lew ...

A presidential inauguration is by tradition the grandest ritual of America’s civil religion, but President Obama took the oath of office on Monday in a ceremony that was explicit in joining theology to the nat ...

Unlike patients who have a choice about getting the flu shot, many health care workers didn’t have a say this year. Unlike patients who have a choice about getting the flu shot, ...

NRA's Wayne LaPierre's statement is at the heart of the problem of gun violence in America today — not just because it is factually flawed, which of course it is, but also because it is morally mista ...

President Obama will publicly take the oath of office on two Bibles once owned by his political heroes, Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. One Bible was well read, but cited cautiously, the ot ...

Since Florida became the first state to try them in 1996, virtual public schools have enjoyed dramatic growth, with at least some of it coming from religious families. Worried ...

The Editors Spiritual growth through bread-making. Many congregations lament that young adults are leaving ch ...

Martin L. Smith Reflections on the Revised Common Lectionary, Cycle C "EVEN IF I OWNED Picasso's &# ...

Tobias Winright Sacred Acts: How Churches are Working to Protect Earth's Climate. New Society. IN THE FO ...

Despite a deep drop in the number of Americans who identify with a particular faith, the country could be on the cusp of a religious renaissance, says Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of The Gallup Poll. ...

'Religion is bad for you' and everyone around you for that matter. 'Being SBNR is shallow and boring.' Well, if these statements are true then we are up Sh*t's Creek without a paddle. ...

There aren't just messes on my kid's high chairs — they're in the Bible too. And, if we're all honest, our lives can be pretty messy too. But is that a bad thing? ...

Dealing with the pain of the school shooting that claimed 28 lives will take faith, support, and joyous Christmas celebrations, church leaders said at the first Sunday services held since the tragedy. ...

Up-and-coming singer-songwriter Noah Gundersen stopped by the Sojourners office to talk with our Brandon Hook about music, his new album Family, God, and creativity. The Seattle-based folk artist was recently ...

When we think of radical monotheism, we hear, “My god is bigger than your god. No, wait: Your god’s a fake!” But theologian H. Richard Niebuhr proposed a kinder, gentler, more generous idea of radical monothei ...

After November’s presidential vote, Catholics could cite ample evidence for their renewed political relevance while dispirited evangelicals were left wondering if they are destined to be yesterday’s election n ...

Thanksgiving Day keeps coming around, keeps reminding us of what could be, keeps giving us tastes of what God wants for us. Thanksgiving Day speaks the bold truth that God isn't done with us. A world of w ...

Martin L. Smith Reflections on the Common Lectionary, Cycle C "NO ONE SPEAKING by the Spirit of God ever ...

Too often, I fear the church is silent and bashful about sex. One reason, I purport, that youth look to society and friends for answers to questions is they fear it's taboo in religious settings, perhaps ...

What I was left with was a longing, a tugging, a hunger for something I could never quite name. It sent me searching, out of the church and into the world. I’ve wrestled for years ...

In a world where the law of evolution is in effect, where there is survival of the fittest, where only the strong survive, there is an art in life where the smallest and most forgotten paint a picture of strug ...

Some claim that God causes evil. In which case, my question becomes relevant – Is God a Cosmic Jerk? Is God a Cosmic Jerk? That’s how I ask the question, but professional theo ...

If we try to mold faith into something more certain than simply faith, it becomes something else. A crutch, perhaps, or a drug. So how or when does this happen? I get asked somet ...

When Staff Sgt. Brandon Hill came home from his third tour in Iraq last year, he expected his wife and young daughters at the welcoming ceremony. What he didn't expect were the pastors, secretaries and me ...

There we were talking with Diana Butler Bass in an online chat and the words flowed forth: Neighborliness is the new sexy. It was ridiculous, but then I started mulling the idea over and this is what happened. ...

Martin L. Smith Reflections on the Common Lectionary, Cycle C “TAKE OFF THE garment of your sorrow and afflic ...

Rose Marie Berger With a warm hen under my arm, I remembered Jesus' plea over another empire-ridden city. ...

C. Christopher Smith Why it's time for a conversation about Slow Church. IN SPRING 1986, a group of Ital ...

Bob Sabath As individuals, we have to slow down to find our spiritual center. But that doesn't make a very good business plan. ...

Samuel Escobar Spiritualized Poverty WHY IS the message of a poor Galilean preacher “good news for the poor”? ...

PBS Religion & Ethics Newsweekly has wrapped up its three-part new mini-series on the rise of the religiously unaffiliated. Editor's Note:  Sojourners has launched  ...

In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, thoughts on natural disasters, the divine, and 'why bad things happen to good people.' In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, though ...

The truth is I am one of growing number of people who choose not to affiliate with any organized religion. I am a “none,” and my journey to “none” started a long before I left for seminary. ...

LAKE TANA, Ethiopia — We finally returned to the boats, where the rest of our group was waiting patiently, and on our journey back to Bahir Dar, I began thinking about pilgrimage and how, perhaps, what you bel ...

Whether there is a God or not, pouring as much love into the world as I can will leave the place better than I found it. And if there is a God who resembles what ancient humans set down in the Bible, so much t ...

In a world that seems completely and irrevocably divorced from the teachings of Christ, where in contemporary society is there a place for the Christian voice? In a world that see ...

PBS Religion & Ethics Newsweekly has launched a new mini-series on the rise of the unaffiliated. PBS Religion & Ethics Newsweekly has launched a new mini-series on the ...

We domesticate Jesus so easily when he's actually calling us to is something rather wild and unpredictable. Jesus is calling us to leave all of our security behind. Jesus is asking us to live with him and ...