CCBlogs thinking critically, living faithfully

by Meg E. Cox Recently, I was delighted when someone asked whether I still had instructions for an educational version of Monopoly I developed over a decade ago to illustrate various responses to poverty. I hadn't realized that the game...

by David Heim At long last I read The Shack, William Young's unlikely bestseller of 2007. It's a book of theological fiction about a man who, in the wake of the murder of his daughter, gets to meet God and...

by David Heim One of the great scenes in It’s a Wonderful Life is when the Bailey Savings and Loan faces a liquidity crisis and Jimmy Stewart, as George Bailey, hops up on the counter to persuade his modest investors...

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Matthew 25:31-46; Ephesians 1:15-23 by Christian Coon In the marketing world, a high "Q score" means that an item or brand is well known and regarded. I'm not aware that anyone rates biblical passages in this way,...

by Steve Thorngate When four men affiliated with Christian Peacemaker Teams were abducted in Iraq, media coverage made little mention of the fact that one of them is gay. This wasn't because we'd finally gotten to a place where this...

by Jon M. Sweeney I bought a book today. No, what I mean is I bought a book at a bookstore today. As I walked down the sidewalk, purchase in hand, I thought to myself, I remember this feeling. On...

by Steve Thorngate Last Tuesday night, I went down to Chicago's Grant Park to witness Barack Obama's election and victory speech. At the event, I was struck by the fact that the crowd was at its loudest and most excited...

Recession-proof investments Judges 4:1-7; Matthew 25:14-30; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 by Christian Coon This American Life recently aired two shows on our current economic climate. In the popular episodes, the public radio program does its best to define things such as...

Technorati Profile

by Donn Ring I was recently on the Washington State wilderness coast photographing the Giant's Graveyard (pictured above). Dozens of sea stacks, some several hundred feet tall, are remnants of the former coastline—resistant stone, still standing while the rest of...

by Richard A. Kauffman On a rainy day in 2005, on a major highway north of Ramadi, an Iraqi family driving in a pickup failed to stop at a U.S. military checkpoint. Fearing there might be insurgents on board, a...

by Steve Thorngate Anxious about the election results? So am I. Ted Lewis and the Nietzsche-emulating Christopher Benson are rather down on voting, and Shane Claiborne is deeply ambivalent. Michael Iafrate is voting, but with little enthusiasm. Not so with...

by Meg E. Cox Whether or not you are persuaded by Electing Not to Vote (Cascade), the book (edited by Ted Lewis and reviewed in the current issue of the Century by Will Willimon) is an important reminder of something...

Be prepared Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25; Matthew 25:1-13; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 by Brent Laytham and Michelle Clifton-Soderstrom It's easy to read the parable of the ten virgins as a tribute to two core American values: individualism and meritocracy. Individualism imagines the...

by Steve Thorngate As I implied in my last link roundup, my online reading as of late has been dominated by two competing impulses: obsessively checking and re-checking FiveThirtyEight vs. seeking refreshment in the astonishingly wide world of things that...

by Richard A. Kauffman When I flew to Iran last January, I discovered that I was sitting beside the Iranian ambassador to Mexico—in economy class. We had a spirited but amicable debate on President Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric about the holocaust and...

by Celia Chazelle In recent months, several Catholic bishops have declared that pro-choice Catholic politicians should be denied communion. In August, several of them lashed out at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for stating that the history of Christian thought shows...

by Amy Frykholm Rob Hopkins is founder of the British-led Transition movement, which aims to address the peak in oil supplies by helping communities begin a process of environmental transformation. The Transition Handbook is a practical guide for small groups...

Saints and their source Joshua 3:7-17; Matthew 23:1-12; 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13 by Brent Laytham and Michelle Clifton-Soderstrom For all the saints in your congregation, today is a crucial moment to name both the importance of the saints—that great cloud of...

by Amy Frykholm Last week, on American Public Media’s Marketplace, I heard something remarkable. Reporter Sean Cole went on a lighthearted mission to check in with a few “end-times economists.” It wasn’t the content of what he found—that the DOW...