Browse Archives
Check out news and opinion posts across the years
National Council of Churches Launches 10-year Campaign against Poverty
American history shows that churches committed to social change eventually succeed. Slavery, child labor, legalized racial discrimination—all collapsed under the heat of faith-based opposition. Now, one of the targets...
“Tribal Generation”
"Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile," said Billy Sunday, the famous baseball-player-turned-evangelist. His words resonate with Tribal Generation, a...
When Seeing a Need is Hearing a Call
Chautauqua Lake shares her famous name with the institution nestled along her southern shore deep into southwest New York. It is a Victorian-style village that for more than a century has been the epitome of...
Marijuana Production: Grass Is Getting Greener
On the street it's called pot, grass, weed, mary jane or reefer. It comes in cigarette and cigar-sized packages called joints and blunts. The active ingredient is delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. Call it what you...
Selling an Offensive Gospel
No one wants to be offensive. Least of all Christians, whom one might think would be the least displeasing people of all. Christians try to love their neighbors. What's not to like? Nothing, if that were all there is...
Enron’s Lesson in Failed Leadership Ethics: An Interview with Joanne Ciulla
Joanne Ciulla, professor and Coston Family Chair in Leadership and Ethics at the University of Richmond Virginia, has been teaching for 27 years, and she said the Enron problem is not new to the world of business. What...
Moving From Theological Education to Ministry Preparation
Over the past several years, I have coached my son through the various stages of decision-making concerning his chosen vocation of ordained Christian ministry. He is the third generation of our family to move in this...
Honoring the Body: Meditations on a Christian Practice
The central affirmation of the Christian faith is the incarnation of Jesus Christ. God, in Christ, took on human flesh and entered the human arena in all its splendor and all its travail. As followers of Jesus,...
Religious Conflict Smolders in India, Hindu Fundamentalists Reject Nation’s Secular Tolerance
Religious violence in India left over 500 people dead recently, after days in which rampaging mobs poured gasoline on victims and set them afire, burned families in their homes and destroyed mosques. The intense...
Baptist-Jewish Cooperation Goes Back More than 200 Years
Contemporary observers of American culture may think that Baptists have always had it in for Jews. Isolated events of the past 15 years make it easy to see why. Southern Baptist Convention President Bailey Smith's 1980...
Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World
With keen insight and practical application to contemporary issues, John Howard Yoder examined the potential secular impact of five biblical practices of the early Christian community in his book, Body Politics (Herald...
Jews for Jesus: A Historical Perspective
In 1953, Moishe Rosen, a young Jewish man who had been a formidable opponent of the Christian gospel, accepted the teachings of Christianity and became a Christian. The next year, God called Rosen to minister to the...
Research Shows Why Marriage Matters
NEW YORK--Marriage is good for your health, wealth and happiness, according to a panel of social scientists. The team of family scholars collaborated to survey a vast body of research on marriage and family issues and...
March is Time to Reflect on Women’s History
March, as Women's History Month, is a time to celebrate and recognize the accomplishments of women. Ever since Congress passed a resolution in 1987, Americans have taken this month to focus on women in history. Jone...
Two Southern Sisters Remembered for Challenging Slavery
"It won't make a difference." "You can't change the system." "That's just the way things are." Have you ever heard these words? Have you ever uttered these words? Have you ever heard these words? Have you ever uttered...
The Inherent Dignity of Human Life
"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never harm me." At least, that's what we tell our children to help them cope with schoolyard bullies. And at the schoolyard level, it may be true. Unfortunately, it...
A Time to Laugh
Laughter, along with an active sense of humor, may help protect you against a heart attack, according to a new study by cardiologists at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. "The old saying that...
Churches View Suicide Awareness, Support Groups as Vital Ministry
At 4:45 a.m. the clock rings in Littleton, Colo., just south of Denver. Bob and Jan Burnside are up and ready to roll because their task is urgent. For 10 years, the Mission Hills Church, a Swedish Baptist...
Baptist Women and Temperance: A Look at the Movement
"Don't drink, smoke or chew, or go with girls who do." The social ethics of many Baptists have revolved around "total abstinence" or "teetotalism." It was that way at my Baptist house. Of course history is not so...
Gen-X Ministry Attracted to Anabaptism
LONDON - Dancers weave through pulsating light to the throb of the in-house band, Xcommunicated, at Club X in the Irish city of Cork. The X is not the "adults-only" variety but the Greek letter chi, a symbol for...
Symbols of Faith: Teaching Images of the Christian Faith
Symbols of Faith is a teaching resource. The book, by Marcia Joslin Stoner, contains 67 symbols of Christian faith, including symbols of the seasons such as Advent, Lent and Easter, 10 different crosses, and the shield...