News - Word&Way

News

HomeNews (Page 246)

Even while hospital chaplains rolled up their sleeves to join other frontline workers as some of the first to be gifted with human-made immunity to COVID-19, many reflected on the work that led them to the historic moment — jobs that are sometimes harrowing, sometimes beautiful, and always deeply felt.

Churches in the most-populous county in the U.S. can now meet in person for worship because of changes in legal and political decisions. But with the pandemic still raging, many congregations continue to meet virtually.

Wearing hard hats and protective suits, members of the choir of Notre Dame Cathedral sang inside the medieval Paris landmark for the first time since last year’s devastating fire for a special Christmas Eve concert.

The biblical Christmas story, the one that announces the birth of Jesus, seems so sweet it can appear almost saccharine. It is so often told as a children’s story and a sentimental one at that. Yet it is deeply political and has been from the beginning.

The actor-turned-evangelical Christian activist Kirk Cameron led a large outdoor Christmas caroling event Tuesday night in Thousand Oaks, California, despite a COVID-19 surge that is filling hospital beds across the southern part of the state.

Editor Brian Kaylor says it won’t really feel like Christmas this year. And we shouldn’t pretend everything’s alright. It’s okay to lament. It’s okay to express our disappointment. It’s okay to miss what we can’t have and do this year. Because that’s part of the Christmas story, too.

At Christmases past, parishioners at Middle Collegiate in New York City rejoiced over gospel hymns, carols, and soul tunes played on a Steinway piano that is now only metal and ashes after the historic church was destroyed this month by fire.

After focusing on COVID-19 for nearly a year, international aid groups are bracing for what happens as the world comes out of lockdown. With declining numbers of volunteers and donors, global faith-based aid organizations are looking beyond their traditional sources of support.

Adam W. Greenway, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, attacked Black Southern Baptists who took offense at a statement he endorsed that condemned Critical Race Theory as “incompatible with the Baptist Faith & Message.”

A cross-ethnic group of Southern Baptists released a statement Friday titled “Justice, Repentance, and the SBC” that challenges SBC seminary presidents on the topic of Critical Race Theory.