Community
Story Stream
They Stopped Going to Church. Community is Bringing Them Back. March 26, 2025
Emma Camp grew up going to church with her family, but she stopped attending as a teenager. “I felt that unless I had a strong sense of literal faith there wasn’t a point,” she tells Yahoo Life. But a few years ago, as an adult, she went back. “I had...
When Caregiving Becomes an Act of Worship March 26, 2025
Every year as Ramadan approaches, I prepare myself for the familiar rhythms of the holy month — the pre-dawn meals, the deliberate pace of daylight hours without food or water, the communal iftars, the extended night prayers. I anticipate that distin...
Seeking a New Way March 25, 2025
“Unfortunately, the political community is not always organized and today our people are living in a time of crisis and seeking a new way of life so that they can move beyond the shameful times which we presently experience and form a new society and...
The Religion of Secular Doomsayers March 25, 2025
There is now a small collection of books that examine wokeism as a kind of corrupted and totalitarian religion. These books range widely in quality and intellectual depth, but their mere existence is an indication that a central cultural problem is n...
Can Hindus and Sikhs Find Peace on Khalistan? March 24, 2025
Harpreet Singh Toor, a Sikh man, is a longtime resident of Richmond Hill, a Queens, New York, neighborhood with a larger than average South Asian population. Toor attends Hindu festivals, works with Hindu men and women and even worships alongside Hin...
Violence Flares as Hindu Group Calls for Removal of Muslim Ruler’s Tomb March 21, 2025
A hard-line Hindu group’s call for the removal of the tomb of a 17th-century Mughal ruler has ignited tensions with Muslims in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, leading to communal violence and the imposition of a curfew.The violence, which oc...
An Unprecedented Moment in American Jewish History March 21, 2025
There’s a fascinating detail in a Semafor scoop on President Trump’s legal battles. Trump has declared the influential law firm of Paul Weiss persona non grata, in retaliation for the participation of some of the firm’s lawyers in Jan. 6 prosecutions...
Sign and Symbol March 19, 2025
I failed so spectacularly as a godfather that my first and only godson, aged twenty, publicly sacked me by denouncing me for various failings in the pages of a British national newspaper. It was, I admit it, the first and last communication between u...
Rebuilding a Pluralistic Syria to Keep ISIS Down and Iran Out March 18, 2025
It is a core national security interest to ensure a stable transition to a democratically elected government reflecting Syria’s pluralistic society. Inclusion of Syria’s religious minorities in drafting the constitution is crucial to the legitimacy o...
Seven Things You Can Do to Lift Up Our Brothers and Sisters in Syria March 17, 2025
In ancient days, when a watchman on Israel’s walls detected an approaching enemy, the first thing he did was grab his shofar.First mentioned in the Old Testament in Exodus 19:13, the shofar was essentially an instrument, a horn made of ram’s horn or ...
The First Task of the Church March 13, 2025
The social thrust of the gospel, and thus the aim of Christian social ethics, is not primarily an attempt to make the world more peaceable and just. Put starkly, the first task of the church when it comes to social ethics is to be the church. Such a ...
Could Federalism Solve Syria’s Religious and Ethnic Hostilities? March 13, 2025
Since the fall of the Syrian regime on December 8th, the term federalism has become a central topic of discussion among Syrians, both inside and outside the country. The former regime, in addition to its repression and authoritarianism, embodied the ...
The Vanishing Flock: Reclaiming the Church in a Post-Pandemic Wilderness March 13, 2025
By March 2025, the pews of America’s churches tell a story of absence. Five years after COVID-19 shuttered sanctuaries, the faithful have not fully returned. Barna Group’s 2023 data revealed that one in three practicing Christians stopped attending d...
The Return of Strong Religion March 12, 2025
The wind has shifted. People want hard religion, not easy religion. They seek out communities that are demanding rather than permissive. They want truth-based theologies, not outlooks softened with talk of “meaning” and “welcome.” Dialogue, a buzzwo...
Arrest of Palestinian Columbia Activist Divides American Jews March 12, 2025
The arrest of a former Columbia University graduate student who had a leading role on campus criticizing Israel’s war in Gaza has sparked sharp divisions within the American Jewish community.Mahmoud Khalil, an activist in last year’s pro-Palestinian ...
The Man Tackling the Masculinity Crisis March 12, 2025
Istood at the perimeter of a room carpeted with tatami mats, watching a troop of young boys recite scriptures and creeds and reflect on their emotions. They were preparing to engage in battle—specifically, Brazilian jiujitsu. “I will not be mastered ...
Syria Update: Christians Among Over 1,000 Massacred March 11, 2025
Christians and other religious minorities in Syria are sounding the alarm as more than 1,000 people have been killed since last Thursday in what rights groups describe as some of the worst atrocities since the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad in D...
The Shepherds Conference March 10, 2025
The first Shepherds Conference I attended as a pastor was in 2016. I had attended the conference in 2001 and 2002 while a student at The Master’s Seminary (in 2000 the conference was suspended while they re-tooled the event), but in God’s providence ...
Men and Boys are Lost. The Church Gives Them a Model of Manliness March 10, 2025
Among my most distinctive memories of growing up Catholic in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is accompanying my father to the meetings of our church men’s group, the Holy Name Society. We met in the community space on the bottom floor of the church building, the...
Is Your Business Drifting? The Silent Threat Christian Leaders Can’t Afford to Ignore March 07, 2025
If I had a nickel for every time I sat across from a Christian business leader who was stuck — stuck on a plateau, stuck in frustration, stuck in the tension between faith and business — I could launch a new Kingdom-driven venture capital fund.The fe...
The Improbable Revival of the Cloister March 07, 2025
When Sister Christiana entered the Poor Clare Colettine monastery in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1993, her parents were concerned. The Poor Clares have not worn shoes since 1406, the year their 1212 order was reformed, not even socks. They wake every da...
The Fault Line that Runs Through American Jewry March 06, 2025
Much has been made of the perceived disappearing act of the American Jewish community. Surveys indicate plummeting marriage and birth rates, rampant intermarriage and a lessening affinity with Israel.These indicia have set off alarm bells as to the p...
American Jews Buck US Trend and Turn Away from Religion March 06, 2025
American Jews remain the diaspora’s largest community. But what are the present contours of American Jewry and what is its future? The Pew Research Centre’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study fills in some details.Pew last conducted this survey in 201...
Washington State Is Attacking Religious Freedom. And It Won’t Stop There. March 05, 2025
Everyone agrees that those in certain positions, from teachers to doctors, should report instances of child abuse and neglect. Democrat lawmakers in Washington state, however, are advancing legislation that would require clergy members to report, eve...
When God Feels Absent, What Do You Do? March 04, 2025
For much of my life, I have spoken to, and heard from, the Lord. This communication is called “prayer”, of course, but over the years it’s felt far more comfortable than the formality that word contrives in my mind. At its height, it has felt like br...
