How can Christians maintain a loving, caring posture in the face of intense and chronic worldwide pain? Living through the COVID-19 pandemic brings this question into focus for many of us.
As many Americans stock up on weeks of provisions, food pantries, food banks and soup kitchens are figuring out how to get hungry Americans the food they need quickly and safely.
Rationalists (including Christian rationalists) want explanations; Romantics (including Christian romantics) want to be given a sigh of relief. But perhaps what we need more than either is to recover the biblical tradition of lament.
Forced by the new coronavirus, Iran took the tiniest of steps to placate global advocacy for religious freedom. Seven Christians were set free, some on bail, as part of a temporary release of about 85,000 prisoners.
Global coronavirus quarantines have meant staking out parcels of online space to define a new, more mutable sense of congregation. Prayers in ones and zeroes merge, as believers look for something holy, or at least wholly human, in that shared pool of data.
On Sunday (March 15) , Alabama’s largest church stopped its in-person worship services. By Tuesday, it started hosting drive-through coronavirus tests in one of its parking lots.
Individual and communal acts of charity in these times are certainly necessary and good. But I’m not so sure that imagining our society’s economic and health care needs as one massive GoFundMe campaign is how we will get through this
