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Nov 4, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Jack Jenkins |Aleja Hertzler- McCain |Julian DeShazier |Wendell Berry
As I write this essay I’ve just finished walking my dog in what now feels like a very pleasant and temperate 81 degrees Fahrenheit. Compared to the triple-digit temperatures my area has been experiencing for much of the summer, 81 degrees is a welcome cooldown. But I remember a time when 81 degrees would feel like what it is: hot.
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Nov 4, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Jack Jenkins |Aleja Hertzler- McCain |Julian DeShazier |Wendell Berry
Sean Rowe began his nine-year term as the 28th presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church with an intimate but festive investiture service on November 2 at the Chapel of Christ the Lord in New York that was livestreamed to close to 20,000 viewers in homes, churches, and dioceses around the world.
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Nov 1, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Jack Jenkins |Aleja Hertzler- McCain |Julian DeShazier |Raúl Zegarra
(Illustration by Martha Park) No one seems to want to talk about the pandemic. It’s like that period your parents spent living apart, which they never told you about and seldom spoke to each other about. It might have been an important and creative and learning season, but we’ve entered a conspiracy of silence and filed it under “too painful.”One thing my congregation started doing during COVID was to livestream worship.
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Nov 1, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Niveen Sarras |Jack Jenkins |Aleja Hertzler- McCain |Julian DeShazier
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. The book of Ruth, a unique narrative situated in the period of the judges, is widely regarded by scholars as a composition from the post-exilic era.
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Nov 1, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Jack Jenkins |Aleja Hertzler- McCain |Julian DeShazier |Raúl Zegarra
The death of Gustavo Gutiérrez, called the “father of liberation theology,” at age 96 on October 22 has set off a reconsideration of the theological and pastoral movement spawned by the publication of the Peruvian priest’s 1971 book, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation.
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Oct 31, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Bruce Lincoln |Jack Jenkins |Aleja Hertzler- McCain |Julian DeShazier
On May 21, 1991, an emergent Romanian scholar was shot to death in a men’s room stall at the University of Chicago Divinity School—a murder that rocked the campus community, bedeviled law enforcement, and remains unsolved to this day. Murdered at age 41, Ioan Petru Culianu—an expert on Gnosticism, Renaissance magic, and the occult—had come to teach in the school through the advocacy of his mentor, fellow Romanian expatriate and distinguished religion scholar Mircea Eliade.
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Oct 29, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Julian DeShazier |Raúl Zegarra |Jack Jenkins |Aleja Hertzler- McCain
A group from my church recently visited a local Muslim organization, founded to provide community and support for young Muslims in our city following a hate crime almost a decade ago in which a White man murdered three young Muslims here. On a rainy Wednesday, we drove to the Lighthouse Project office. We gathered in the prayer room to listen and learn. We wanted to know these neighbors better, to drink tea with them, and to hear their stories. We also wanted to learn about Islam.
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Oct 29, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Steven Schwartzberg |Jack Jenkins |Aleja Hertzler- McCain |Julian DeShazier
“I was the witness of sufferings which I have not the power to portray,” wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America after seeing Choctaw nationals cross the Mississippi River into Arkansas on their way to the Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. The US government’s expulsion of Native American tribes from Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi in the 1830s is among our gravest—and often misunderstood—national sins.
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Oct 28, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Julian DeShazier |Jack Jenkins |Aleja Hertzler- McCain |Wendell Berry
This Sunday’s gospel readingcaptures a pivotal moment in the ministry of Jesus, in which he articulates the core of his ethical teaching in response to a question about the greatest commandment. Immediately prior to this, the Sadducees question Jesus about the resurrection, which they deny (Mark 12:18–27).
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Oct 28, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Julian DeShazier |Jack Jenkins |Aleja Hertzler- McCain |Wendell Berry
After three years of discussions at every level of the Catholic Church, a summit of Catholic bishops and lay people at the Vatican ended Saturday, with the publication of a document laying out a vision for structural reform of the church and calling for the hierarchy to make more room for lay leaders, especially women. The final document of Vatican Synod on Synodality presented pathways to a more inclusive and transparent church that gives all Catholics a say on the future of the institution.
