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Dec 18, 2024 | 
ministrywatch.com | Heather Hahn
At a time when many in The United Methodist Church are grappling with deep budget cuts, the denomination’s bishops also are tightening their belts. At the bishops’ request, the board of the denomination’s finance agency unanimously passed a 2025 spending plan on Dec. 11 that does not include raises for the episcopal leaders.
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Oct 30, 2024 | 
urban.org | Heather Hahn
Stories, Data Tools, Blogs Stories Data tools Urban Wire Evidence in Action Podcast In their own words Data@Urban Critical Value podcast Evidence and Ideas for Change
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Oct 4, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Allen C. Guelzo |Heather Hahn |Nanette Sawyer |Jack Jenkins
Karl Barth, who believed God’s word meets and saves us within our historical circumstances, famously opined that preachers should hold the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. American journalist Alan Barth (no relation to the Swiss theologian) held that news is only the first draft of history. With the advent of social media, news cycles, and the proliferation of tendentious news outlets, the views of both Barths have become increasingly problematic.
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Oct 1, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Heather Hahn |Nanette Sawyer |Jack Jenkins |Aleja Hertzler- McCain
It’s widely rumored that organized religion is going down the drain. While the secularization thesis has been debated for decades, its main components are hardly controversial. Religion has reduced social power: its chief officers have less influence on political ideas and social norms, its language and habits no longer permeate the discourse of public life, and fewer people make collective worship and fellowship the rhythm of their week.
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Sep 29, 2024 | 
urban.org | Heather Hahn |Cary Lou |Hannah Daly |Elli Nikolopoulos
Public spending on children usually represents an effort to invest in the nation’s future. To inform policymakers, children’s advocates, and the general public about how public funds are spent on children (from birth through age 18), this 18th edition of the annual Kids’ Share report provides a new analysis of federal expenditures on children from 1960 to 2023.
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Sep 27, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Heather Hahn |Randall Balmer |Debie Thomas |Nanette Sawyer
General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church on September 26 announced that it had signed an agreement to lease its property in New York City to Vanderbilt University, which has its main campus in Nashville, Tennessee. The agreement provides GTS a continued, year-round presence on the campus in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan for decades to come, the press release said. “The General Theological Seminary is seeking to adapt to a changing world.
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Sep 27, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Ron Adams |Heather Hahn |Randall Balmer |Debie Thomas
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. I have never been a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher. Having grown up in a theological tradition that used fear as one of its primary evangelistic tools, I long ago grew weary of it. Frankly, that kind of motivation never felt to me like good news.
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Sep 26, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Heather Hahn |Nanette Sawyer |Randall Balmer |Brad East
Will Evans is the founder of Deep Vellum, a nonprofit publishing house in Dallas that seeks to put local and global authors in conversation. Founded in 2013, Deep Vellum has published seven of Nobel prize–winning writer Jon Fosse’s novels in translation and has made a name for itself as a literary translating powerhouse. But for Evans, the most important thing is building a literary community in Dallas, one reader at a time. Tell us the story of how Deep Vellum came to be. What was your vision?
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Sep 25, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Isaac T. Soon |Heather Hahn |Nanette Sawyer |Randall Balmer
Christians have long wrestled with the meaning of Paul’s writings and the implications they have for us in our own contexts. Some see Paul as a herald of Christian freedom through justification by faith, while others see him as the villain who transformed the egalitarian Jesus movement into a hierarchical church.
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Sep 24, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Heather Hahn |Richard Kauffman |Debie Thomas |Jonathan Tran
I’ve never been sure what to tell my kids about sex. Early on, rather than explaining how they were conceived, I borrowed the old line about storks delivering them to our door. Later, as a strategy for raising my daughter in a sex-depraved culture, I considered holding off potty training until her late teens. (Diapers: the ultimate mood killer.) As my kids got older, the stork story wore thin and potty training, sadly, took its normal course.
