By Rev. Adam J. Copeland How Religious Leaders Are Taking Charge of the Environmental Congregations should be leading the environmental movement, says the Rev. Canon Sally G. Bingham, president of the Regeneration Project. Interfaith Power & Light, which mobilizes a religious response to global warming, promotes energy conservation, energy efficiency and renewable energy. Have you ever heard someone described as, “So heavenly minded, he was no earthly good?” … [Read more...]
By Margaret Aymer Resurrection is the theme of the fifty days of Eastertide. Yet, for decades, the month of April has been filled with particularly horrific deaths: • The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (April 4, 1968) • The murder of 13 persons at the American Civic Association Immigration Center in Birmingham, NY. (April 3, 2009) • The shooting death of 32 students at Virginia Tech. (April 16, 2007) • The end of the Waco siege and the death of 82 members of the … [Read more...]
By Rev. David Lewicki There is a pall over this morning. As this story begins in John’s Gospel, “it is still dark.” It is still dark where we wake up today. Beautiful, beloved children of God awake this morning in rooms where no light will break through. Morning brings no solace. It is still dark. How Women Are Breaking the Church's Glass Ceiling Jesus treated women differently than others would have treated women during his time, serving as a sort of early … [Read more...]
By Greg Carey Immediately following the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope came the predictable speculation. From the United States and other wealthy nations, folks wondered what the new Pope would say about issues related to gender and human sexuality. What about birth control, homosexuality, and women’s leadership in the church? Did the new Pope really support civil unions for gay and lesbian couples in Argentina, as some reported? Others, including many from Latin … [Read more...]
Dr. Walter Brueggemann The voice that speaks in Isaiah 50:4 – 9a is the poet of the exile himself. Here he offers an autobiographical reflection on his call as a prophet sent by God to the deported Jews in Babylon in the sixth century BCE. His message to the Jews is they are now free to go back home to Jerusalem. This freedom came, says the poet, because of the dispatch of Cyrus the Persian at the behest of YHWH, the Lord of all of history. … [Read more...]
By Efrain Agosto I have often wondered about the trajectories my life has taken. I was raised a Latino Pentecostal in New York City but educated in a liberal arts tradition at Columbia University in Manhattan. I was exposed to evangelical and then liberal Protestant traditions in seminary and graduate school. My theological views have changed over the years. I have moved from Pentecostal to Baptist to Congregational (United Church of Christ) church traditions. Yet at each step of the … [Read more...]
By Matthew L. Skinner Current events, like much about our lives, frequently leave us hopeless, fearful, and uncertain. Religious faith isn’t a matter of wishing away these experiences; it involves perceiving God in the midst of our hardships. I still remember one Friday night when I, an overly sensitive preteen, made a conscious decision to stop watching the nightly news with the rest of my family. I found what I saw too depressing and threatening: crime after crime, yet another house … [Read more...]
ByEric D. Barreto Obviously, Jesus didn’t own a gun, never said anything directly about firearms. He couldn’t have. Of course, that won’t solve the debates now broiling this nation about violence and the people and tools that perpetuate it. Nonetheless, the fact that Jesus has nothing to say about guns has not stopped a number of pundits from extrapolating Jesus’ ethics on gun violence. In recent days, some Christians have tried to construct a case that Jesus himself would support … [Read more...]
By Matthew L. Skinner Charity doesn’t leave us unchanged, which is just one reason why it’s hard to make ourselves do it. To be more specific: when we extend generosity and justice to others, it alters our relationship to them. Especially when those “others” are foreign to us. Hospitality has ways of making the people who receive it come inside and stick around, whether we really want them to or not. We see this on display in Luke 4:22-30, which tells the second half of a story … [Read more...]
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