Browse Archives
Check out news and opinion posts across the years
What Rules Your Church? The Clock or Compass?
Which do you live by: clock or compass? If the clock dictates, your life is consumed with the immediate and pressing issues of the moment. Clock life is focused on short-term results. If the clock rules, you find...
Uncut Tax Movement Is Morally Righteous
British protesters targeted Barclays bank on Feb. 19, occupying some 50 branches and bringing international attention to a social justice campaign aimed at corporations that avoid paying taxes. Never heard of UK...
Forced contemplation
By John Pierce During my years in campus ministry, I enjoyed visits (often with students in tow) to the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Ga., east of Atlanta. Despite my deep admiration for those within this...
Number of Catholics Worldwide Edged Up, Vatican Says
VATICAN CITY (RNS) The number of Catholics in the world edged up 1 percent in 2009, the Vatican said, bringing to 1.18 billion the number of adherents of the world’s largest church. The statistics appear in the latest...
Suit Accuses Televangelist of Breaking Moral Clause
(RNS) Christian publisher Strang Communications has sued evangelist Benny Hinn, claiming he violated a moral clause in a book agreement and owes the company more than $250,000. “Strang discovered that Mr. Hinn was...
Budget Cuts Target the Poor, Faith Groups Say
(RNS) Get ready for more undernourished infants, dangerously cold homes and disease-stricken communities in developing countries if proposed federal budget cuts become law. That’s the message coming from left-leaning...
British Company Exports Execution Drugs to U.S.
Clare Nonhebel writes movingly in the latest edition of the Baptist Times about how she came to correspond with a prisoner on death row in an American prison. Romell Broom grew up with every imaginable disadvantage....
Learning Firsthand How Immigrants Are Treated
"I've learned so much about immigration from your Facebook posts," wrote a friend on my Facebook page "I, too, have learned a lot from the articles I post," I replied. Since I returned to Texas from Georgia, I've had...
Literal Worldviews Have Powerful Hold On Lives
Bart D. Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He spoke recently at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. His topic was...
As hard as pulling teeth
I have often heard folks describe some very difficult enterprise by saying "it's like pulling teeth." I have, in fact, used the expression myself. But I'm not sure I had really understood how hard pulling teeth can be....
National Debt is New Hot Issue for Evangelicals
WASHINGTON (RNS) Many economists warn that the government’s huge national debt is a looming threat to long-term prosperity. But is it also immoral? According to a growing number of conservative Christians, the answer...
At 89, Civil Rights Icon Reflects on Faith, Activism
(RNS) The Rev. Joseph Lowery, the civil rights activist who worked alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., has always combined his work on secular causes with a sacred message. At age 89, the retired United...
Stuff We Don’t Want, Stuff They Can’t Use
(RNS) On a recent family trip to Africa, spotting locals wearing T-shirts and baseball caps bearing American brands or slogans became something of a parlor game—a way to pass long hours in the Land Rover driving from...
Every Church Needs a Ministry Machine. Act Now!
The pastor-to-congregant connection has traditionally been a relational one, but your church may now expect its pastors to function more like ministry machines. These machines only say what you want to hear, and they...
Elected Officials Use Deficit as Political Pawn
After an all-night session, the newly elected Republican majority in the House passed a budget reduction bill of more than $60 billion. I'm concerned about some of the proposed cuts, but what I find most frustrating is...
What God’s Holiness Says to Anti-Immigrant Legislation
We don't want to love our neighbors and enemies as we love ourselves. We don't even want to claim people who are different from us, less powerful than us, more vulnerable than us or somehow indebted to us as neighbors....
Time to smell the leather
By John Pierce Although growing up with few earthly possessions, none was more treasured than my baseball glove. In fact, from the first hint of spring until the late fall chill, the well-worn glove was more of an...
Marriage seminar sparks Chick-fil-A boycott
HARRISBURG, Pa. (RNS) Amy Goropoulos’ stomach and her ethics do not agree on Chick-fil-A. She used to visit the restaurant with her husband and coworkers, but she recently quit the chicken cold turkey. The...
In Italian Sex Scandal, Vatican Caught in a Bind
VATICAN CITY (RNS) No major Western European leader in recent years has been a more stalwart ally of the Roman Catholic Church than Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi’s stands against euthanasia,...
Jesuits Sued over Sex Abuse Bankruptcy
PORTLAND, Ore. (RNS) Lawyers representing a group of people who accuse Jesuit priests of sexual abuse filed 37 lawsuits Thursday in bankruptcy court, asking for about $3 million. The lawsuits claim that the Roman...
Georgia Christians Push for Guns in Sanctuaries
A Georgia state representative and a Baptist pastor say Christians are sitting ducks at church and need to be able to carry guns for protection. Rep. Bobby Franklin (R-Marietta) has introduced a bill (H.B. 54) that...