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Jun 7, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Melissa Florer-Bixler |Nanette Sawyer |Amy Frykholm |William H. Willimon
One of the biggest ever research projects into scripture is looking into how people use the Bible and what it means to them—an attempt to understand why, in a time when 90 percent of the world’s population has access to the Christian sacred text, relatively few consider it a foundation of their lives.
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Jun 7, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Nanette Sawyer |Melissa Florer-Bixler |Amy Frykholm |William H. Willimon
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. Trusting in God sometimes feels like an act of will. I want trust to be easy. I want to relax into God’s protective shelter.
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Jun 7, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Melissa Florer-Bixler |Nanette Sawyer |Amy Frykholm |William H. Willimon
Century illustration (Source images: Getty) If I told you I’ve come to believe that the best way to respond to the climate crisis is the cultivation of the contemplative life, I’d expect raised eyebrows. You might reasonably reply that, no, now is the time for action, both corporately and individually, rather than contemplation. I hear that. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to listen knows we have reasons for disquiet about the future of our planet.
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Jun 6, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Melissa Florer-Bixler |Nanette Sawyer |Amy Frykholm |William H. Willimon
From left, former editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education Jeff Selingo, and Clark Gilbert, church commissioner of education for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, listen to comments of Shirley Hoogstra, president of the Council of Christian Colelges and Universities, during a forum on January 12, 2023.
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Jun 6, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Melissa Florer-Bixler |Nanette Sawyer |Amy Frykholm |William H. Willimon
From left, former editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education Jeff Selingo, and Clark Gilbert, church commissioner of education for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, listen to comments of Shirley Hoogstra, president of the Council of Christian Colelges and Universities, during a forum on January 12, 2023.
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Jun 5, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Melissa Florer-Bixler |William H. Willimon |Amy Frykholm |Debie Thomas
“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake,” Stephen Dedalus says, early in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Twenty-five years ago, when I was starting my dissertation research on this groundbreaking novel from 1922, I spent some time analyzing the significance of this statement in the context of Irish history and Joyce’s artistic theory. Now, I don’t have to analyze it. I just get it. I am watching an epoch of history unfold, and I don’t like where it seems to be going.
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Jun 5, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Melissa Florer-Bixler |William H. Willimon |Amy Frykholm |Debie Thomas
President Joe Biden signed an executive order Tuesday dramatically limiting the number of immigrants who may apply for asylum at the southern United States border. The policy pauses entry at the border, starting Wednesday, once 2,500 illegal entries have occurred in any 24-hour period.
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Jun 5, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Nanette Sawyer |Jon Mathieu |William H. Willimon |Heidi Neumark
As a girl, I’d pronounce compote like coyote. Clafoutis rhymed with clematis or stephanotis instead of cherry or juneberry, syllables I never quite pronounced right— add to this list, a plaque and the plague; musically, a zydeco versus a xylophone.
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Jun 5, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Melissa Florer-Bixler |William H. Willimon |Amy Frykholm |Debie Thomas
After the United Methodist Church allowed its clergy to marry same-sex couples and lifted its ban on ordination of LGBTQ clergy, Methodists in Ivory Coast became the first annual conference to leave the 9.9 million-member denomination, even as other African conferences have emphasized their ties with the US church.
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Jun 5, 2024 | 
christiancentury.org | Nanette Sawyer |Jon Mathieu |William H. Willimon |Heidi Neumark
“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake,” Stephen Dedalus says, early in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Twenty-five years ago, when I was starting my dissertation research on this groundbreaking novel from 1922, I spent some time analyzing the significance of this statement in the context of Irish history and Joyce’s artistic theory. Now, I don’t have to analyze it. I just get it. I am watching an epoch of history unfold, and I don’t like where it seems to be going.
