Yanan Rahim Navarez Melo is a theologian getting his MDiv at Princeton Theological Serminary. He's also an artist pushing the boundaries of a burgeoning genre known as postclassical music. Here's how he sees these two areas of study overlapping.
Our Lord Jesus Christ could often be found on a mountain. He went to a mountain to pray, to seek solitude from the crowds. He fasted and prayed for 40 days and 40 nights on the mountain where the devil tempted him. He met Moses and Elijah on Mount Tabor and was transfigured before his disciples. His most famous sermon is the Sermon on the Mount.
As a homebirth midwife struggling with infertility, Abby Hall Luca intimately knows the gaps in fertility and maternity care. For 12 years she guided couples through the journey of growing their families while not being able to grow her own.
What does it look like for churches to act faithfully in the current tumultuous political crisis? Prophetic witness and speaking up for justice matters; acting faithfully goes hand in hand with speaking faithfully. Whatever policy priorities churches focus on, they should always look to go deeper into solidarity with those in need in their communities — especially marginalized people who are in danger due to unjust government actions.
Solidarity isn’t affection. Solidarity is, instead, a recognition that our destinies are intertwined because of our common humanity. As Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”
Prepare hearts for Easter this Lenten season with Heifer International's Fill the Ark program. This meaningful family devotional fosters gratitude through a four-week giving calendar, helping families reflect on their blessings and extend generosity.
At the first of what will be many funerals that appear in The Monkey, a young priest struggles to find the right words. After offering some half-hearted bromides about how everything happens for a reason, the priest can no longer pretend that there’s some divine plan behind the death that brought them together — an accident involving a hibachi chef’s knife getting too close to a diner.
“It is what it is,” the priest (Nicco Del Rio) finally declares, with the most conviction he can muster. “The words of the Lord.”
Before he was hospitalized for double pneumonia, Pope Francis was battling firm resistance from some of his own cardinals about how to plug a widening gap in the Vatican’s finances.
On Feb. 13, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze the billions of dollars in life-sustaining foreign aid suspended by executive order in January. The order, which cited “enormous harm” to global networks of relief agencies and the populations they serve, was met with relief by Christian anti-poverty and anti-hunger ministries. But even amid relief, the chaos of the last month has been relentless, say direct aid providers like World Vision and advocates like Bread for the World.
In late January, the Pew Research Center released a study of religious nationalism worldwide, including in the U.S. The results? Only 6% of Americans fit Pew’s definition of “Christian nationalist.” That's a smaller number that several previous estimates, but sociologists and researchers suggest it may just provide a shade of nuance to the way we think about religious nationalism in America.
As a theologian, ethicist, professor, priest, and author, Gary Dorrien has helped shape and excavate the overlap between social justice and faith for nearly 50 years. He has written definitively as a historian and prophetically as an activist, all while teaching generations as a professor of religion. Now, he explains why it was time to tell his own story.