Almighty and everlasting God, who in the Paschal mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation: Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. BCP Read more

By Peter Smith / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette LATROBE — When he died in 2003, Fred Rogers was described in many headlines as gentle, beloved, kind and — of course — neighborly. But how about radical? Counter-cultural? Trouble-maker? Scholars and others are using such adjectives as they assess the legacy of the late creator and host of the long-running “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” For all his much-parodied gentle voice and manner, the Latrobe native actually worked from a steely social conscience. He used his program,... Read more

Dishwasher wisdom, by Jura Konklus: Carolyn Forte, director of home appliances for the Good Housekeeping Institute, is paid to know the best way to get your dishes sparkling clean. She is still amazed at all the differences of opinion about dishwashers and how to run them for maximum performance. “Loading the dishwasher causes a lot of angst. This is still a battle ground, and people have such strong feelings about things like pre-rinsing,” she says. “It’s a little bit of... Read more

Gretchen Reynolds: To keep our muscles healthy deep into retirement, we may need to start working out more now, according to a new study of world-class octogenarian athletes. The study found substantial differences at a cellular level between the athletes’ muscles and those of less active people. Muscular health is, of course, essential for successful aging. As young adults, we generally have scads of robust muscle mass. But that situation doesn’t last. Muscles consist of fibers, each attached to a... Read more

Linda Wasmer Andrews: Novelists and poets have long held that walking and writing are closely connected. Now there’s research to back up that claim. Among the past literary luminaries known to be avid walkers were Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf and Henry David Thoreau. But perhaps the most celebrated walker-writer was William Wordsworth, who always seemed to be ambling down country lanes, hiking up mountains or wandering “lonely as a cloud.” His friend, essayist Thomas De Quincey, estimated that Wordsworth “must... Read more

John Frye: “Christian universalism is the view that in the end God will reconcile all people to himself through Christ,” is Robin A. Parry’s opening sentence. Parry sets out to convince the reader in the rest of his essay in Four Views on Hell that “What makes universalism universal is simply the insistence that ‘God will reconcile all people.’” Parry assures the reader that the universalist view is not some new liberal concept, but was supported by numerous Early Church... Read more

Long ago, at a school before Northern Seminary, Andrew Marin scheduled an appointment with and we had a long conversation, animated to the top of the ceiling by Andrew’s enthusiasm. Not long after he sent a ms into IVP and Andrew Marin became the go-to person for dialogue between the progressive LGBT voices and the conservative voices. His book hit a nerve, he went on the road, and he got himself into the middle of some very heated conversations. I... Read more

The next chapter of Ron Highfield’s new book The Faithful Creator looks explicitly at divine creation and modern science. Certainly the first image that comes to mind for many is the (supposed) conflict between the conclusions of modern science and biblical faith in God as creator.  But is this conflict real and unavoidable, or is it a conflict grounded in misunderstanding?  Highfield suggests that “we need clear distinctions between theological, metaphysical, and scientific domains and methods of study.” He believes... Read more

You Are What You Love Part 1 A few years ago, James K.A. Smith wrote an outstanding book called Desiring the Kingdom that changed the way I saw ministry. It was incisive and painful and helpful all at the same time, because it helped me to name some of the problems that I was seeing in church work. Namely, it helped me with the problematic question of why, with all the resources and energy and time that we in Western... Read more

To open his chapter to The Apostle Paul and the Christian Life, Bruce Longenecker, professor at Baylor University, asks this good question, a question that is a poignant example of how the new perspective operates: “What does Paul’s engagement with first-century Jewish covenantalism have to do with Christian life in the twenty-first century?” (47). I know of no old perspective approach to the Christian life that frames the question this way. The old perspective tends reify “works” into bad and “faith”... Read more