Crack the first windows of your family Advent calendar and you will soon enough hear Mary and Zachariah and the angels in lyric worship and praise. The hour of promise come ’round could only ever begin that...
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Captivating might not be the first word to come to mind regarding a documentary about Fred Rogers — creator and host of the long-running children’s show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood — but Won’t You Be...
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During his opening address at the 73rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly in September, Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sosene Sopoanga implored U.N. member states to hold each other accountable for...
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When I applied for the pastoral position at my current congregation, during one interview, I asked the search committee when they’d last celebrated a baptism. They thought for a moment. “Years,” they...
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In 1743, 275 years ago, the Swiss city of Bern dissolved its Commission for Anabaptist Affairs, or Tauferkammer. It had been established in 1659 to oversee the elimination of the local Anabaptist population....
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In October, the longtime evangelical leader Pat Robertson weighed in on the murder of journalist Jamal Kashoggi in a Saudi consulate. According to Robertson, the United States needed to tread lightly with...
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Jewel and I celebrated our golden anniversary with a two-month visit to 25 national parks and as many friends west of the Mississippi. We “camped” inside our Odyssey van, cooked our food on an old Coleman...
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Immigration has shaped nearly every epoch of U.S. history. Americans are a nation of people who have left one place in order to arrive in a new world. With the rise of the Trump administration, however, the...
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Hear the opening lines of Deuteronomy 6 and you cannot escape a feeling that you have stumbled on some center pole of sacred story, a great stake having been driven to the core. It’s as though you find...
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This fall, I moved from Rusk County, Wis., to Boston to attend college. Not one of Boston’s big-name institutions like Harvard or MIT, but Sattler, a college of a different stripe. Named for a 16th-century...
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In a few days we’ll observe Thanksgiving. We will pause to thank our Creator for the blessings we have received. But some of us may ask: How can we give thanks in the midst of animosity? In the United...
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“Woman’s Protest Exposes Cruel Political Ploy.” This could be a headline for the present day or for the story of Rizpah. We don’t hear much about Rizpah. Her perplexing narrative is found in 2 Sam....
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Credentialed Mennonite ministers are a unique lot, yet our experiences are diverse. In some congregations, a theological understanding of the priesthood of all believers diminishes the significance of pastors....
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Contemporary memoir, unlike autobiography, is selective in its sharing of life experiences for a defined purpose: to represent a voice, often that of a woman, not heard before — from Maya Angelou’s...
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Confession: I am not always the world’s most observant person. Friends once rearranged half the items in my office as a joke and were quite disappointed that I never knew the difference. Still, I’m fairly...
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For six days a week, we labor to make the world as it should be. On one day, we accept the world as it is. A friend and ministry colleague repeated this comment from one of his students about what it means to...
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An American friend asked me if Canadians were watching the Supreme Court nomination process Brett M. Kavanaugh in September. The answer was yes, I said. Partly because, living so close to the U.S., news about...
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This November, four states will vote on legalizing marijuana: Utah and Missouri for medical use and North Dakota and Michigan for adult recreational use. If all four proposals pass, the national total would...
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Many Christians I know cannot stand Jacob. In technical terms, he’s what’s known as a “grade-A slime ball.” He steals from his brother, lies to his father, tricks his uncle and sleeps with his true...
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One hundred years ago next month, on Nov. 11, 1918, an armistice brought World War I to an end, ceasing the four-year-old conflagration that resulted in 40 million casualties, unprecedented destruction and...
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Sometimes it takes someone who is 2 (“and a half,” she stresses) to lead the way. For 40 years, starting in our 20s, weeks after the arrival of our first daughter, our family has spent summer retreat time...
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Three decades ago, Julie Putnam Hart sat in a peace lecture opposing the Strategic Defense Initiative, commonly known as Star Wars. Intrigued by the presenter’s journey, she wanted to understand how a...
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We have a long history in the United States of blaming immigrants — whether German, Irish, Catholic, Chinese or, more recently, Hispanic and Muslim — for society’s ills. Immigrants are called criminal...
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I have a nasty suspicion that a comprehensive review of the Bible will either be: a) too long, complicated and detailed; or b) too general to be helpful. Was I ever wrong about Meghan Larissa Good’s book!...
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People of color can’t get a break these days. When their rights aren’t being eliminated, they are harassed by white neighbors. There has been a rash of whites reporting people of color to the police for...
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