“In God’s economy, the spear that the soldier used to pierce Christ’s side should never be used for violence again.” - @revrachelmann.bsky.social Really excellent essay on war from the Revd Dr Rachel Mann in June’s edition of @christiancentury.bsky.social 🕯️

“I bristle every time I hear Jackson’s music casually playing in the background at the grocery store. I was astonished to see the public line up in record-breaking numbers to buy popcorn and watch the biopic about him.” – Martha Tatarnic www.christiancentury.org/features/mic...

“After the scam I did all I could to save money.... Now I could spend the rest of my life trying to prove my father wrong.” – Logan C. Lovelace, one of the winners of our latest Readers Write essay contest, with support from the Frederick Buechner Center www.christiancentury.org/readers-writ...

Taste & Read, our free bi-weekly newsletter, sets the table for a hearty conversation about food and faith. Featuring theological reflections, highlights from Century archives, and even the occasional recipe or two. Sign up today! www.christiancentury.org/taste-read-e...

“What is the measure of our decency? Where is the line we refuse to cross—the line beyond which we will not allow ourselves, or our nation, to fall?” – Kelly Brown Douglas www.christiancentury.org/voices/house...

David J. Wood reviews three recent books that lament the trend toward defaulting to technologically mediated communication over in-person interactions. What is at stake, according to these authors, is nothing less than our humanity. (tags: @chrislhayes.bsky.social @wwnorton.com)

“What was was wind and air before microplastics, was water before forever chemicals, was forever made eternal, we thought, forests for days and birds that blacked the sky, wild cats and stag, fish leaping. ” – read Deb Baker‘s entire poem #poetry www.christiancentury.org/poetry/what-...

“Among the people, crime boss Peixão (‘Big Fish’) presents himself as a warrior guided by God to lead people and territories. Advancing or retreating during police raids, for instance, are decisions that he attributes to God, who allegedly communicates them to him.” – Eduardo Campos Lima

The Century's editor/publisher Peter W. Marty offers some advice to preachers given the partisan times in which we are living. www.christiancentury.org/first-words/...

“For me, ‘status confessionis’ is not about calling people out or splitting communions. It’s about saying precisely what matters to the church in this moment; it’s about naming that the dehumanization has reached such a scale that we are no longer in normal times.” – @revdrmichaelwoolf.bsky.social

“This war is manifestly stupid. But we shouldn’t let the garishness of its stupidity fool us into thinking it’s unique. All war is stupid. Stupidity is the very substance of war.” – Mac Loftin www.christiancentury.org/online-colum...

“Many churches in my neck of the American Christian woods have claimed to take the Bible ‘seriously but not literally,’ a claim intended to counter the literalism of American fundamentalism. But it turns out we haven’t taken the Bible literally or seriously.” – Stephanie Perdew

“Two recent books help clarify why some extremely well-educated people support Trump’s fundamentally anti-intellectual movement.” – @rbratten.bsky.social reviews @lkatfield.bsky.social and Jacob Silverman @princetonupress.bsky.social www.christiancentury.org/books/minds-...

“Translation is an act of interpretation. Given that this particular translation of the Ten Commandments has been mandated to be displayed in public spaces, we should interrogate it to determine how, intentionally or otherwise, it interprets the biblical passage.” – Matt Thomas

“At a time when fascism looms ever more menacingly and state violence against the vulnerable is again dramatically unmasked, our rituals must be a place to practice belonging . . .” – Emilee Walker-Cornetta www.christiancentury.org/features/for...

“Will Willimon equally challenges despair and defensiveness. He urges his reader to see the heist of his childhood church as a cautionary tale.” – review by Ophelia Hu Kinney: www.christiancentury.org/books/heist-...

Are you a poetry lover? If so, we have a free, weekly newsletter just for you: Poem for the Week. Our poetry editor Jill Peláez Baumgaertner provides commentary on a poem selected from our magazine and a few extra poems for further reading. Sign up today! www.christiancentury.org/poetry-email...

“The ascension becomes a disturbance of the status quo—more than that, a work of resistance and revolution.” – @revrachelmann.bsky.social www.christiancentury.org/voices/holy-...

“For Armenians, Noah’s journey and the land’s sanctity are part of a unified narrative that is profoundly ingrained in the cultural consciousness.” – Arthur Aghajanian www.christiancentury.org/features/noa...

“I wonder about that blind eye revealed by the Michael Jackson biopic’s success. Is it that we really don’t want to have to wrestle with such horrifying allegations? Is there something about the assault of male children that we’re not willing to account for?” – Martha Tatarnic

“For the women in the group, healing means both recovering from what happened and ensuring others know the truth about their experiences. The community they’ve built offers what Vision of Hope never did.” – @reportertracy.bsky.social www.christiancentury.org/news/faceboo...

“Each of May Kytonen’s boxes holds a delicately cut Chinese lattice screen, superimposed over a hand-embroidered floor plan from HGTV’s Dream Home.” – art commentary from Maria Fee: www.christiancentury.org/article/may-...

“Churches have not simply lost working-class people; they have been formed as institutions built on a brand of moral superiority that requires middle-class stability to participate.” – Melissa Florer-Bixler www.christiancentury.org/voices/has-w...

“Leaving certainty is not the same as leaving religion.” – Peter Choi www.christiancentury.org/voices/room-...

"The one benefit of the world being marched into hell by the stupidest men alive is that speaking with intelligence has never been simpler. We only have to say: Enough."— Mac Loftin for @christiancentury.bsky.social

“@stephengrahamjones.com’s talent for writing inventive mainstream horror with disaffected, misunderstood teenage heroes is salve to my Gen X childhood wounds.” – @jessicamesman.bsky.social reviews The Buffalo Hunter Hunter www.christiancentury.org/books/vampir...

“In God’s economy, the spear that the soldier used to pierce Christ’s side should never be used for violence again. War is what happens when we fail to lay it down.” – @revrachelmann.bsky.social www.christiancentury.org/voices/great...

“A tree is known by its fruit, but a person’s status before God can only be known by God.” – the Century editors www.christiancentury.org/editors/when...

“The book is a case study of Father David Roney, a Catholic priest who escaped accountability by fleeing from Minnesota to a rural mission in the Indigenous highlands of Guatemala.” – Brian Clites reviews Kevin Lewis O’Neill www.christiancentury.org/books/when-p...

“If spiritual practices already work for you, they’ll work better if you understand some of the religious context and content that you’ve left behind.” – Liz Bucar, in an interview with @elizabooksann.bsky.social www.christiancentury.org/interviews/w...

“The sole aim of this war appears to be making things as they were the day before the war began—a kind of anti-reason cementing irrationality at the heart of the enterprise. This war is truly stupid in Bonhoeffer’s sociological sense: a cascade of violence hostile to thought itself.” – Mac Loftin

“Rebecca Sue is not so much an illness narrative as a series of reflections, vignettes, and recollected epiphanies gathered from 60 years of intimate relationship with a sister whose brain damage became a formative factor in the writer’s own life.” – Marilyn McEntyre reviews Kathleen Norris

“The God we talk about is ostensibly one others have experience with, and not all of those experiences have been positive. The church I want to help build is likely different from whatever someone else thinks of when they hear that word.” – Julian DeShazier www.christiancentury.org/voices/valle...

“As much as I want to say I don’t think books should end with an exclamation mark, I think I would say there is an exclamation mark in my book. Hope.” – Brandon Ambrosino, in an interview by Bailey Pickens www.christiancentury.org/interviews/p...

“People are complicated, and gender is ineffable. It is not an argument, and as such it cannot be proven or disproven any more than the existence of God.” – Isaiah Lewis www.christiancentury.org/features/rea...

“Every Holy Roman Empire has a Napoleon coming for it.” – Benjamin Dueholm www.christiancentury.org/voices/dange...

“A national dynamic like this would have been unthinkable just ten years ago. Now, assassination attempts, conspiracy, and death wishes are part of the fabric of public life. Something critical has broken in the American psyche.” – Lilia Ellis www.christiancentury.org/features/spe...

When Bonhoeffer stops being a symbol, he can start being a guide. – Liza Johnson reviews Matthew Kirkpatrick’s Bonhoeffer for the Church www.christiancentury.org/books/pastor... @fortresspress.bsky.social

“Noah’s legacy is deeply ingrained in Armenian culture, where he is revered as a central biblical figure and holy ancestor, intimately attached to the soul of the nation. To understand why this is so, it’s essential to recognize the notion of sacred land.” – Arthur Aghajanian

“Here I am, announcing that beautiful, well-preached sermons, formed in a Christian tradition, are helping to fill a spiritual need for me.” – @olivalejandra.bsky.social www.christiancentury.org/voices/sermo...

“Many of my psychology clients seem to be coming to me for something like absolution. In a technological, competitive, capitalistic society in which one’s worth is measured by productivity, a deep sense of inadequacy can result for those who struggle to compete.” – Mark E. DeVries

“Many of our stories involve violence used to solve problems, and many of those stories center on men. But there are other voices, indeed even Christian voices, pressing the question: What kind of man do you want to be? One such voice is Tim Winton.” – John Flack, on Winton’s novel Juice

“We were getting tens of thousands of dollars each day, because there was a chance that it would help undo the harms that had been done to Chicago over the course of a brutal occupation by federal agents.” – Alejandra Oliva www.christiancentury.org/voices/irrev...

“Two recent books help clarify why some extremely well-educated people support Trump’s fundamentally anti-intellectual movement.” – @rbratten.bsky.social reviews @lkatfield.bsky.social and @jacobsilverman.com (tags: @princetonupress.bsky.social @bloomsburybooksus.bsky.social)

“At least cancel culture is, at worst, pretending to pay tribute to decency and righteousness. The culture of the last year or so refuses to pay any such tribute. It says, instead, We’ve missed you, wife-beaters. Welcome back, racists.” – @philipchristman.bsky.social

“These are wildly different interpretations of Shelley’s novel. Like all Frankenstein stories, though, both films are fundamentally about where and how we recognize humanity: If humans unleash monstrousness on the world, who are we to judge when our monsters turn against us?” – Kathryn Reklis

“When fully realized, fascism wins by feeding off democracy like a parasite, eliminating the humanity in each of us . . . Fascism reduces us to either victims, bystanders, or perpetrators—even passive perpetrators—of machineries of terror.” – Omer Aziz www.christiancentury.org/features/whe...

“The only thing worse than having your plight reduced to a number is not being counted at all. Anthropologist @brian-goldstone.bsky.social organizes his nonfiction narrative around the statistically invisible.” – review by Brian Martinez de la Combs: www.christiancentury.org/books/not-ho...

“Demographers’ warnings are dire: the church has not merely failed the working class; it has re-formed itself in the image of middle-class capitalism.” – @melissaf-b.bsky.social