By 2040, there may be no Anglican Church members left in Canada. That’s the finding of a new report commissioned by the Anglican Church of Canada. The report shows the church running out of members in 20...
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The man sits as he died 2,000 years ago, in a position that looks like weeping. Surrounding him are amphorae jugs used to import wine, olive oil and fish sauce that fed the huge appetite of Rome at the center...
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Lake Titicaca, impossibly wide and deep and high above the sea, fills an immense mountain trough in the Andes along the Peru-Bolivia border. The lake is so big that it encompasses rocky islands. Strangely...
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True evangelical faith does not lie dormant. It has become all things to all people. — Menno Simons Sometime in the 1980s I came to understand myself as an evangelical. I believe there is good news to the...
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Providing food for oneself and family is a daily chore. Should you decide to complete this chore by actually cooking something, your resources are legion. Traditionally, one would reach for a cookbook or maybe...
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The issue is stark: Pollution from plastics and other waste is harming all creatures, all over the world. It is affecting human health, from residents of the wealthiest countries to children living near scrap...
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This study of two minority religious communities in northern Mexico — Old Colony Mennonites and Mormon colonists — focuses on the accommodation of these groups by Mexican governmental officials and their...
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During the recent film awards season, The Farewell has garnered a lot of attention. A comedy-drama written and directed by Lulu Wang, the film centers around Chinese American Billi, who learns her grandmother...
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In the Gospel of Matthew, the account of Jesus’ teaching on prayer is found right in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. One way to understand the sermon is to see it as a description of the character of...
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Last year ended with the news that two Mennonite magazines — Mennonite Brethren Herald of the Canadian MB Conference and Beacon of the CMC, formerly Conservative Mennonite Conference — were ceasing...
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Actually, I’m not from Muskogee, Okla., where “we don’t smoke marijuana” and “even squares can have a ball,” as country singer Merle Haggard celebrated. Still I can imagine being from there as I...
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On Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday, I found myself in a worship service at Riverside Church in New York City, my skin tingling as I gazed at the pulpit where King delivered his controversial and groundbreaking...
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Natalie Frisk and I have something in common: Our earliest memories of Sunday school include damp, musty church basements. Many assumed these places were where we kids learned about God. But, lucky for both of...
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The connection between the passages from 1 Kings in our previous lesson and Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness might not be obvious. But what if we reflect on the meaning of the title used of Jesus in...
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I marvel at the revolutionary and transforming work of Jesus. He was passionate, direct and God-directed. Religious and secular power brokers considered him a threat because he changed the world by...
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New analysis indicates that when King David saw Bathsheba, she wasn’t bathing nude but “was actually heading out the door to run some errands while wearing leggings as pants, causing the king to...
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Richard Showalter wrote this column shortly before his death from pancreatic cancer on Dec. 14 at the age of 74. His columns have blessed and challenged MWR readers since 2012. An obituary in the Jan. 13 issue...
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I made my own wedding dress. I have sewed dresses for myself since I was a teenager, moving from frustration and seam rippers to calm satisfaction in watching the pieces fit together, just so. My wedding dress...
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Mission is a word that evokes a wide variety of responses in people I know. In some contexts it’s primarily connected to spies, the military and movies about both. For others it carries baggage from past...
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I turned around to see a young woman with a blue hijab trying to stop a girl squealing loudly and running. It’s a Saturday night in Lancaster County, Pa. The Route 30 Chick-Fil-A is filled with those of us...
[read more]No, I didn’t slide open the tomb of an ancient revolutionary in Israel. But I did rest on the half-open lid of what might be his grave at the town of Modi’in and consider what it takes to provoke oppressed...
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The eighth chapter of 1 Kings may capture the moment in the Old Testament where the two great covenants — Davidic and Mosaic — come together with the most harmony. Solomon, David’s successor as...
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“Hello, massa. Bottom rail on top this time.” That’s what a freed black slave in the Union army is reported to have said when he saw his former owner, captured in a battle during the U.S. Civil War,...
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The late Mennonite Brethren writer Katie Funk Wiebe, who died in 2016, was passionate about translating Die Hungersnot in Russland und Unsere Reise um die Welt (The Famine in Russia and Our Trip Around the...
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When we walk into the hospital dining room, we see a young girl seated waiting to eat. She is an inpatient at a pediatric hospital about an hour and a half outside of Pyongyang, North Korea, hospitalized after...
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