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Oct 1, 2024 | 
pres-outlook.org | Scott Hagley
Growing up in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, I could tell you about the “Ice Bowl” well before I could read the words “ice” or “bowl” off a page. For the uninitiated reader, the “Ice Bowl” contributes an essential – perhaps the essential – narrative strand in the mythology of the Green Bay Packers and all things Wisconsin.
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Apr 15, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Elizabeth Schrader Polczer |Josh Scott |Scott Hagley |Karen Rohrer
In the poem “Introduction to Poetry,” Billy Collins laments his students’ tendency to approach a poem with weapons drawn. The former US poet laureate paints a portrait of the delight he hopes they will embrace when encountering verse:I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slideor press an ear against its hive.
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Apr 15, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Elizabeth Schrader Polczer |Josh Scott |Scott Hagley |Karen Rohrer
A group of Derry Sikhs prepare the Nishan Sahib flag to be hoisted ahead of the reopening of the Sikh Cultural Centre in Londonderry, Northen Ireland, on March 24. (Photo courtesy of Amerjit Singh) On a cloudy fall day in 2021, about 100 people were praying in the only Sikh temple in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, when smoke suddenly choked the prayer hall. Worshippers covered their mouths and noses and ran outdoors as flames consumed each room.
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Apr 15, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Heather Richardson |Elizabeth Schrader Polczer |Scott Hagley |Karen Rohrer
As the United States—together with much of the world—teeters on the precipice of authoritarianism, a bit of historical context can’t hurt. Democracy Awakening provides some context leavened with a dash of hope that we can still, somehow, reverse course.
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Apr 12, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Josh Scott |Elizabeth Schrader Polczer |Scott Hagley |Karen Rohrer
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 was 28 years old when I became a dad. That first moment of holding my tiny, brand new son in my arms created a fundamental shift in the core of my being. No area of my life was left untouched, unaffected. How did I love a person I’d never met so deeply, so instantly?
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Apr 11, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Mitri Raheb |Elizabeth Schrader Polczer |Scott Hagley |Karen Rohrer
Last fall, several weeks into Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, I participated in an interfaith press conference calling for a cease-fire.
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Apr 11, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Elizabeth Schrader Polczer |Scott Hagley |Karen Rohrer |Peter W. Marty
It’s hard to know how to ask God to bless America right now. On a recent visit to the East Coast, I found friends and peers in a mixture of panic and denial about the coming November election. I did one thing on my visit, however, that gave me three thoughts about how not to feel so paralyzed. I went to church. It was a conventional Eucharist at an Episcopal church. But three moments struck me in a special way. The first was the prayers of the people.
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Apr 10, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Elizabeth Schrader Polczer |Scott Hagley |Karen Rohrer |Peter W. Marty
In a new document on human dignity issued Monday, the Vatican’s department that guides Catholic doctrine reinforced the church’s opposition to abortion, surrogacy, gender theory, and any attempt to change one’s sex. “Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God,” the document states.
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Apr 10, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Peter W. Marty |Scott Hagley |Karen Rohrer |Elizabeth Schrader Polczer
I kept meaning to watch the new season of True Detective. I wasn’t a fan of the first season’s glamorized misogyny wrapped in sophomoric philosophical chatter, but this new season promised to right the wrongs of the past. Two women detectives solving a mysterious crime in the barren cold of an Alaskan winter, hints of a powerful divine feminine replacing the hopped-up toxic masculinity of the Southern gothic? Yes, please.
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Apr 8, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Peter W. Marty |Heidi Haverkamp |Scott Hagley |Karen Rohrer
The special glasses have been delivered. The portable toilets have been ordered. Now, for expectant sky watchers and for property owners—including a number of churches—in the path of the total solar eclipse Monday, it’s just a matter of waiting and hoping for good weather until the eclipse begins.
