While doing research for my doctorate, I interviewed three Christian ministers. There was a traditionalist Catholic Anglican, a strong evangelical Anglican and a liberal Methodist. On every issue they sometimes took completely opposing positions. With this and other research I concluded in 1989 that the old denominations were increasingly meaningless, and new ones were emerging inside the old.
All we know is that his name was Matthias and that for some reason he was chosen to replace the traitor Judas in the circle of Jesus’ apostles. . . . I have a feeling that Matthias turns up many times in our lives. He is the person who just failed to get into the photograph;
Ms. Duflo, Mr. Banerjee and their colleagues have a simple, if radical, goal. They want to overhaul development aid so that more of it is spent on programs that actually make a difference. And they are trying to do so in a way that skirts the long-running ideological debate between aid groups and their critics.
The editors of the Lead include several movie fans and we are eagerly awaiting tonights’ Academy Awards. In the meantime, we thought that you would enjoy the winners of the Beliefnet Film Awards.
It is quite possible that the votes of centrist evangelicals—perhaps representing as many as one-third of our nation’s massive evangelical community—will decide the election this fall.
Booktrust, the British reading charity, conducted a survey of 4000 in Great Britain, to determine the best children’s books of all time. Leading the list is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Princeby J.K. Rowling, placed sixth.
That Jesus’ revelation and the woman’s realization of him come through dialogue is an important feature to notice about the Gospel of John. Jesus does no sign here. There is no “miracle.” Rather he makes a claim and offers living water to this stranger.
In April of 1819, right around the time that he began to suffer the first symptoms of tuberculosis — the disease that had already killed his mother and his beloved brother, Tom — the poet John Keats sat down and wrote, in a letter to his brother, George, the following question: “Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul?”
Brazilian priests have spoken directly to Pope Benedict XVI to ask him for a revision of the canonical law obliging celibacy for those carrying out priestly functions.
Former Cafe contributor Susan Daughtry Fawcett is featured in Sunday’s Washington Post. The subject is funerals. Yours.