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Mar 20, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Amy Frykholm |Yolanda Pierce |E. Heath |Brian Bantum
The story never meant to be told: The suppressed history of African-American religious women with Shannen Dee Williams (S3:E6)Welcome to In Search Of, a podcast where we go in search of voices and perspectives that inform and expand a life of faith. In this episode, we learn about the missing history of Black Catholic sisters in the United States with Dr. Shannen Dee Williams–and why that history has been erased.
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Mar 19, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Yolanda Pierce |E. Heath |Brian Bantum |Gabe Colombo
I’ve wondered which I love more, God or basketball. I know, if you need to ask you already know. Still, if they matched up one-on-one, who would win? Those concerned about a Christian theologian asking such questions—instead of sticking to mysteries like the problem of evil—might find some comfort knowing that while I teach at a Christian university, it’s also a basketball school, with multiple national championships and a president who’s quite the baller herself.
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Mar 18, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Yolanda Pierce |E. Heath |Malka Simkovich |Alejandra Oliva
What I remember is like a dream. I was visiting a friend years ago, around the time of an important saint’s day in her country, and her family decided that we would go to the saint’s shrine to see the festivities honoring her. We piled into their car after a hasty dinner and joined others streaming toward the basilica. The drive would have taken less than an hour any other day, but night fell around us and hours passed as traffic moved at a glacial crawl.
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Mar 18, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Yolanda Pierce |E. Heath |Malka Simkovich |Alejandra Oliva
Eleven years ago, The Hollywood Reporter hosted a roundtable to hype the Oscars. Somehow things got on to the topic of Holocaust movies, and Austrian director Michael Haneke called movies like Schindler’s List “unspeakable” because they make mass murder into entertainment: drama and resolution, suspense and catharsis, popcorn and candy.
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Mar 18, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Yolanda Pierce |E. Heath |Malka Simkovich |Alejandra Oliva
In ancient greek theories of vision, sight was about physical touch as much as visual perception. Extramission theories imagined the eye sending out beams of light or streams of fire to make contact with the world. Intromission theories suggested that every object emitted tiny replicas of itself, or constantly shed minute particles like a snake sheds its skin, and that these replicas or particles entered into the eye.
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Mar 15, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | E. Heath |Yolanda Pierce |Malka Simkovich
To receive these posts by email each Monday, sign up. For more commentary on this week's readings, see the Reflections on the Lectionary page. For full-text access to all articles, subscribe to the Century. In my Century lectionary column for this Sunday, I talk about the plaque in my seminary’s chapel that sits just below the pulpit.
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Mar 15, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Yolanda Pierce |E. Heath |Malka Simkovich |Brian Bantum
I have been a Christian for over 30 years. Most days I still feel a lot like that skinny 15-year-old who was lost in the world only to be found by God, by a people. And though that feeling of a thin veil between me and the world still seems to slip up and down, I left that Southern Baptist Church and its theology a long time ago. There was no singular trauma or betrayal that led me away from the evangelical nest.
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Mar 14, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | George M. Marsden |Yolanda Pierce |Malka Simkovich |E. Heath
The modern revival of interest in the Puritan pastor-philosopher Jonathan Edwards began with historian Perry Miller’s 1949 biography. In Miller’s telling, Edwards was a solitary genius in the wilderness. While still a teenager, he was the only American to read and comprehend the revolutionary insights of John Locke and Isaac Newton.
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Mar 14, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Yolanda Pierce |Malka Simkovich |E. Heath |Randall Balmer
“Reality had little weight in his transcendence,” wrote poet A. R. Ammons, “so he / had trouble keeping / his feet on the ground.” I couldn’t help but think of these lines from “He Held Radical Light” as I watched Wonka, a musical origin story of the self-described “magician, inventor, and chocolate maker” Willy Wonka.
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Mar 14, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Yolanda Pierce |Malka Simkovich |E. Heath |Randall Balmer
When I first walked into Letha Dawson Scanzoni’s apartment—which was, principally, a working office—I was astounded by how many books she’d packed into the floor-to-ceiling bookcases that lined all four walls of her small living room. I had traveled from Texas to her home in Norfolk, Virginia, to become better acquainted with the influential evangelical writer.
