Use this page to scroll back through over 800 previous entries across several topics and disciplines. See the various subject matter pages for content selected for specific disciplines.
Teaching about Religion in a Children’s Museum: The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, the largest children’s museum in the world, has taken on a potentially controversial subject: world religions. The exhibit follows children and families of several faiths as they participate in religious pilgrimages and rituals. In addition to covering religious history and culture, the exhibit explores contemporary […]
U.S. Churches Offer Safe Haven For A New Generation Of Immigrants: Echoing an earlier civil disobedience campaign in the 1980s, U.S. churches are again defying federal immigration authorities. Across the country, a handful of congregations are opening their doors to offer safe haven to Central American immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally and are under deportation […]
Point / Counterpoint: What It Means to be a “College of the Church”: Robert Benne and Tom Christensen engage in a conversation about Lutheran higher education, exploring a variety of topics including the quality of a Christian faculty, their vocation, the liberal arts, and being defined by a discipline or defined by the Gospel.
What (Who?) is a University? What does it mean to say this, that the faculty of a university are the university, and therefore not employees of it? John Henry Newman suggested an answer to this question in The Idea of a University. On his understanding, the institutional structure of the modern university, and its oversight by […]
Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism — A positive review of this book by Chris Jennings (Random House, 2016) that discusses the Shakers, New Harmony, the Fourierist Phalanxes, Icaria and Oneida. “Although evenhanded, and with obvious affection for his subjects, Jennings also notes, ‘Anyone nuts enough to try building heaven on earth is bound for a […]
Christianity Today on the PP /CMP Case: Daniel K. Williams, a historian of the pro-life movement, and Focus on the Family president Jim Daly provide their perspectives on the ethics of the Planned Parenthood Fetal Tissue case. The articles link are Why Are Pro-Lifers Borrowing Pro-Choice Philosophy? and I Know Why the Government Went after Pro-Life […]
How the homeless population is changing: As the population ages, the homeless are getting older too, presenting societal challenges in the years ahead. In the early 1990s, 11 percent of the adult homeless population in the United States was aged 50 and over. It increased to 37 percent by 2003, and today half of America’s homeless […]
Digital warfare: RNS and PBS report anti-jihadi campaigns on social media — The real battlefront against ISIS and other terrorists is on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTubes–social media where jihadis are made and recruited. A corps of new warriors familiar with the terrain includes a West Point team (see this RNS coverage) in a contest for most effective online presence […]
Ariens Co. in Milwaukee has fired seven Muslim employees for taking unscheduled prayer breaks, and 14 others have resigned over the issue. The Muslim employees wanted management to continue a previous, more lenient practice of allowing them to leave their work stations at different times to pray as their faith requires of them. Ariens said it was […]
FDA Committee Cautiously Endorses MRT: An elite panel of scientists and bioethicists offered guarded approval of a form of genetic engineering that could prevent congenital diseases but would result in babies with genetic material from three parents. The committee concluded that it is ethically permissible to “go forward, but with caution” with mitochondrial replacement techniques (MRT). […]
