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by David E. Anderson Christmas, more than any other holiday in the Christian calendar, seems to spark the poetic impulse — an impulse that began, as the Episcopal priest, professor, and poet Chad Walsh (1914-1991) remarked some years ago, with … More
A new report says this year Americans gave record amounts of private charitable donations. Another report says Americans donated nearly $3 billion to post-hurricane relief efforts. Yet nearly four months after Hurricane Katrina, the magnitude of the destruction is still difficult to comprehend. In the midst of it, many people here say the themes of Christmas are echoing in new and poignant ways.
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In Germany, several of the concrete slabs at Berlin’s memorial to the Holocaust were defaced by vandals. In spite of anti-semitic incidents and other difficulties, the number of Jews moving to Germany has been going up dramatically. Also growing are the accompanying efforts to help them recover a sense of Jewish identity. More
Part four of a four-part series on faith and family: a growing number of families are not the traditional married mother and father with children — single mothers, cohabiting men and women, gay couples, and the divorced have become more common. How are churches and other religious groups responding to these families? More
Amid the slow recovery from Hurricane Katrina, Christ Church, the Episcopal Cathedral of New Orleans, turned 200 years old. It honored its birthday and the city with a formal concert and the street music of a jazz funeral — mourning what was lost but confident of rebirth. More
Read excerpts from the Dalai Lama’s November 15, 2005 remarks at the Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C. More
Evolution, the theory that all organisms descended from a common ancestor, is widely accepted as a cornerstone of biology. Kansas will now also permit other ideas, including intelligent design. No designer is mentioned, but critics say intelligent design is disguised creationism, a religious view. More
Read more of Lucky Severson’s interview with the Reverend Darrell Armstrong of Shiloh Baptist Church in Trenton, New Jersey. More
Read more of Lucky Severson’s interview with the Reverend Wallace Charles Smith on historical and current issues facing African-American families. More
Read more of Lucky Severson’s interview with the Reverend Eugene Rivers in Boston, Massachusetts. More