Martin Luther King, Jr. was many things to many people, but in his own mind, he was first and foremost a pastor. And although he was born 39 years before he was assassinated, his body implied a different story. An autopsy on King revealed that despite his youth, he had the heart of a 60-year-old-man. My understanding…
“Long the dominant group in American religious life, White Christians have fallen below a majority of the U.S. population—and are moving to the right politically as they recede.” So wrote CNN and Los Angeles Times political analyst Ronald Brownstein, in an article that highlighted the results of a 2015 Pew Research Center Religious Landscape Survey.…
Malcolm Himschoot serves as the Minister for Ministerial Calls and Transitions for the United Church of Christ with the denomination’s MESA Team. Research shows that becoming aware of bias we hold (yes, we all hold bias) is the first step to overcoming it. The mental models we carry at any point in our lives change…
In a lengthy essay that was excerpted from his latest book, lawyer and journalist Steven Brill wrote of a widespread perception that America no longer works socially, politically, and economically, and that our country has become narcissistic and sclerotic. This is largely the fault of the Baby Boomer generation, Brill argued (“How Baby Boomers Broke…
I was paging through my Christian Century magazine last month, and there among the news items was a simple bar graph titled “Clergy Women in American Denominations.” The more I looked at it, the more so many things in my life made sense! The graph, downloadable at http://www.stateofclergywomen.org, has three bars: one for 1977, one…
Today’s CARD blog is written by the Rev. Elizabeth Dilley, Minister for Ministerial Support and Accountability, part of the national setting’s Ministerial Excellence, Support and Authorization (MESA) ministry team. She writes this piece on behalf of the 2018 Genesis Fund Selection Committee, which also included the Rev. Bentley deBardelaben, the Rev. Penny Lowes, and the…
Did you go to summer school when you were a kid? And if you are a teacher, did you teach summer school? Many students view summer school as a kind of punishment (and some teachers do, too), but I remember summer school fondly. For three consecutive summers, back when I was in high school, I…
