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Jul 3, 2023 | 
christiancentury.org | Chad Martin |Alejandra Oliva |Logan Crews |Tony Lin
Editor's note: This story is part of "Growing a Green Church," an ongoing series focused on churches' efforts to steward their buildings and land effectively in the context of a changing climate. The project is produced in collaboration with the Christian Century, Episcopal News Service, Faithfully Magazine, National Catholic Reporter and Sojourners, with support form the Solutions Journalism Network, and funding from the Fetzer Institute. Find more stories in the series here.
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Jul 2, 2023 | 
christiancentury.org | Julian DeShazier |Amy Frykholm |Chad Martin |Tony Lin
Jesus’ invitation in matthew 11 may be one of the most comforting passages in scripture: “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” It is an invitation to sabbath living. Much of the chapter leading up to this consists of Jesus teaching about ways of knowing God outside theological training and strict religiosity. The scene that follows in the next chapter shows Jesus in conflict with religious leaders over rules for the sabbath.
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Jul 1, 2023 | 
christiancentury.org | Chad Martin |Alejandra Oliva |Gary Dorrien |Tony Lin
When barack obama was elected president in 2008, he symbolized the hope of a post-racial solution to the United States’s congenital anti-Blackness and racism. His election supposedly proved that established traditions of anti-racist politics are obsolete. Those who still talked about America’s anti-Blackness and racism needed to get their clocks fixed; as he said in his first inaugural address, their arguments were stale and no longer applied.
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Jun 30, 2023 | 
christiancentury.org | Chad Martin |Tony Lin
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. Psalm 13 fits a typical pattern for psalms of lament: an invocation and complaint, a petition, and a statement of trust and words of praise. Like all good liturgical language, it transcends its time and place to be a source of comfort to many.
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Jun 29, 2023 | 
christiancentury.org | Chad Martin |Julian DeShazier |Tony Lin
We need to reimagine church. Heard that sentence before? Of course you have. It’s the theme (and sometimes the title) of various conferences, books, and even congregations throughout the nation. As a resurrection people—one pointing toward a Jesus we cannot see and hoping to build a world that is not and perhaps has never been—our ability to imagine and reimagine is a critical part of our faith. It is how we respond to the harsh and undesirable things of life.
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Jun 29, 2023 | 
christiancentury.org | David A. Hollinger |Chad Martin |William Schultz |Tony Lin
Does Christianity have a future in the United States? David Hollinger poses this question in his important new book. Few people are more qualified to answer it than Hollinger, who over the course of five decades has established himself as one of America’s foremost intellectual historians. Hollinger has long been preoccupied with how changes in American society, especially growing ethnic and racial diversity, are reflected in American intellectual life.
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Jun 28, 2023 | 
christiancentury.org | Chad Martin |Alejandra Oliva |Amy Frykholm |Tony Lin
My friend Joanne has been translating Deuteronomy word for word, a book she calls “the great poetic part of the Torah.” Joanne is 88 and the author of more than 20 novels. A former EMT, firefighter, and college professor, she is a master of English and a student of Hebrew. She and I meet monthly in a group of writers—a mix of Reconstructionist Jews and deconstructionist Episcopalians—and I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that Deuteronomy would eventually come up. Everything else has.
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Jun 27, 2023 | 
womenshealthmag.com | Tony Lin
你肯定無法想像那個在螢幕上容易感動落淚的蕭敬騰在年少時期是個叛逆到不行的小孩。他從小學三年級開始抽菸，甚至時常翹課、打架，成為所有人眼中的問題學生。直到有一次，他與三五好友將一名同學痛毆入院，這才意識到事情的嚴重性，更進一步思考自己未來到底要什麼。其實蕭敬曾在這段時期與音樂有了初次接觸，但礙於家裡的經濟加上他火爆的個性最後與老師鬧翻，算起來前前後後也只學了兩個月。 少輔組的陪伴影響了蕭敬騰，他們不叫他改變任何行為，而是以「陪伴」感動了他。不只讓蕭敬騰意識到自己對音樂的熱愛，也讓他願意放下暴躁的脾氣回到不歡而散的爵士鼓老師身邊，向老師重新學習音樂。成名後的蕭敬騰也不忘少輔組的陪伴之情，時常回到去教社區青少年打鼓，這次，他成了陪伴孩子的那個人。 17歲的蕭敬騰毛遂自薦來到民歌西餐廳駐唱，當時很多人說他傻，餐廳駐唱的錢不多，為什麼還要去？然而，蕭敬騰是這麼想的：「其實我根本不在乎多少錢，我反而很感謝這裡讓我有站上來的機會，做這行要的其實只是期待別人的肯定，歌手需要掌聲。」在餐廳駐唱的時間也變成他練唱的經驗，累積的實力讓他在20歲那年一鳴驚人！...
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Jun 23, 2023 | 
christiancentury.org | Chad Martin |Miroslav Volf |Alejandra Oliva |Tony Lin
We often talk about a particular translation as “doing justice” to a text. By that, we mean that it expresses it fully—that whatever heights of prose or sleights of hand the author concocted in the original language, the translator managed to do the same, backward and in heels. When a translation is “just,” it has seen and considered and transmitted into a new language all of the facets and possibilities inherent in a text.
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Jun 22, 2023 | 
christiancentury.org | Keri L. Day |Chad Martin |Alejandra Oliva |Tony Lin
As an Afro-Pentecostal womanist raised within and continuing to identify with that tradition, I often struggle to excavate liberative stains within a movement that observers generally characterize as an almost completely otherworldly religious expression, one whose adherents retreat into ecstatic spirituality to escape real-world sociopolitical realities.
