The Christian Century back issues from March 1999:
The next Christian century.(moving into 21st century)(Brief Article)(Editorial)
Mar 03, 1999; ... This magazine has been a friend and a resource for me for 35 years. It has stimulated my thinking, encouraged me professionally and personally, challenged my assumptions, introduced me to new movies, books and authors, pricked my conscience, made me smile and, on occasion, made me angry ....
Explosive issues.(addressing homosexuality in the church)
Mar 03, 1999; ... Sometimes society faces issues that seem to defy rational solution. They excite extraordinary tensions, and participants in debate find that simple language is misunderstood and motives are vilified. In the 20th century this level of irrational hostility has exploded around such issues as ...
Tobacco's victory.(settlement is not punishment)
Mar 03, 1999; ... This past November the tobacco industry agreed to give $208 billion to the states over the next 25 years. The tobacco companies want us to think that they have redeemed themselves from their evil deeds. But the truth is that they've engineered a settlement that may be one of the best con ...
Women in ministry.(women clergy face discrimination, lower wages)(Brief Article)
Mar 03, 1999 ... As a young girl, Paula Maeder Connor dreamed of bringing about social change by becoming an ambassador to a foreign county. Today she is the pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church in Lakewood, Ohio, and a spiritual ambassador to her congregation and the community. Reluctant to follow in the ...
L.A. police detain black Episcopal priest.
Mar 03, 1999 ... The handcuffing and detention of a black priest, in full vestments, outside of his church by police officers in pursuit of suspects has stunned the Los Angeles area's Episcopal bishop, who says he doesn't understand why police can't tell the difference between clergy and criminals. In a ...
PCUSA committee wary of sexual issues.
Mar 03, 1999 ... Trying to salvage a troubled report on rebuilding urban community life in the U.S., the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has removed a section on the issue of sexual orientation. The committee, which met in Louisville, Kentucky, ...
Panel exempts Amish from child-labor laws.
Mar 03, 1999 ... A House of Representatives committee has voted to exempt the Amish from federal child-labor laws that prevent some teenagers from working in sawmills and woodworking shops. Amish tradition forbids formal schooling beyond eighth grade, at which point young people enter apprenticeship ...
Man executed for crime committed as a teen.
Mar 03, 1999 ... For the first time in 40 years, an American who committed his crimes at age 16 has been executed. Scan Sellers, who was 29 at the time of his execution, was one of two men put to death February 4 in Oklahoma and Arizona. The executions came a week after Pope John Paul II successfully ...
`Good News' backs efforts to change gays.
Mar 03, 1999 ... In an open letter to the bishops of the United Methodist Church, leaders of Good News, the conservative, evangelical caucus within the nation's second largest Protestant denomination, have urged the bishops to encourage and support ministries that seek to "transform" gays and lesbians. The ...
Muslims criticize article on Qur'an research.
Mar 03, 1999 ... American Muslim groups have strongly criticized a recent Atlantic Monthly article about scholarly research into the origins of the Qur'an, the Islamic holy book that orthodox Muslims consider divine revelation. The article--"What Is the Koran?," by Atlantic staffer Toby Lester, published ...
Orthodox archbishop gets official backing.(Brief Article)
Mar 03, 1999 ... The embattled head of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America on January 12 attended a showdown meeting in Istanbul called to deal with demands that he be removed from office--and he emerged with the strong backing of the only man who could force him out. During a five-hour, closed-door ...
Vatican accuses China of blackmailing priests.(Brief Article)
Mar 03, 1999 ... Chinese authorities regularly employ prostitutes to help brainwash Roman Catholic priests and subject them to sexual blackmail in efforts to weaken their loyalty to Rome, the Vatican charged January 4. Fides, the Vatican missionary news agency, leveled the charge in reporting the arrest of ...
Ecumenical pioneer Oscar Cullman dies.(Brief Article)(Obituary)
Mar 03, 1999 ... Oscar Cullmann, a Protestant theologian, New Testament scholar and one of this century's ecumenical pioneers, died on January 16, aged 96, in Chamonix, France. Born in 1902 in Strasbourg, Alsace, Cullmann studied at the universities of Paris and Strasbourg, becoming a professor in ...
Briefly noted.(antiabortion Web site loses court case; South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission)(denied amnesty to four former police officers in the 1977 beating death of antiapartheid leader Steve Biko)(Brief Article)
Mar 03, 1999 ... * A controversial Web site that depicted doctors providing abortions as criminals has been pulled off the Internet. The absence of the Nuremberg Files site was called "a temporary setback" by Neal Horsley of Carrollton, Georgia, its creator. He told USA Today he expects it to return ...
Acknowledgment.(the power of God)(Brief Article)
Mar 03, 1999; ... Psalm 23 Samuel 16:1-13 Ephesians 5:8-14 John 9:1-41 In a church I served, one of the pillars of the congregation stopped by my office just before services to tell me he'd been "born again." "You've been what?" I asked. "Yes," he said, "last week I visited ...
A new sexual revolution: The case for modesty.(Review)
Mar 03, 1999; ... A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue. By Wendy Shalit. Free Press, 291 pp., $24.00. It was probably at least a decade ago, while I was teaching at Oberlin, that a young African-American woman--I'll call her Tonya--who had been a student in several of my classes told ...
Living in public housing.
Mar 03, 1999; ... We were walking up to our third-floor apartment when an elderly neighbor opened her door. "I heard you come in last night," she said. We were distressed, and said we were sorry to have disturbed her. She shook her head at our apologies. "You don't disturb me. I just don't sleep well until ...
Proclaiming the Lord's death.(Brief Article)
Mar 03, 1999; ... High view of the ministry of the Word and pronounced free church sensibilities notwithstanding, I finally caved in. I sought refuge from bad preaching in the celebration of the Eucharist. My gripe was not with the oratorical skills of preachers in the churches I frequented, ...
Why Scripture Matters.(Review)
Mar 03, 1999; ... Why Scripture Matters. By John P. Burgess. Westminster John Knox, 186 pp., $20.00. A more accurate title for John Burgess's book might be How Scripture Matters or more modestly How Scripture Might Matter. Burgess does not attempt to add to the ever growing library on the ...
Sweet Charity: Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement.(Review)
Mar 03, 1999; ... Sweet Charity: Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement. By Janet Poppendieck. Viking, 354 pp., $26.95. As she pushed her way through fresh snow while walking from her Brooklyn apartment to a soup kitchen, Janet Poppendieck hummed "Good King Wenceslas," a tune from her ...
Religion and healing.
Mar 03, 1999 ... The century worries that people may, on the basic of scientific reports indicating a link between religion and health, begin using religion for utilitarian reasons, i.e., in order to achieve better health and longer life, rather than for more valid reasons--i.e., responding to a higher ...
It adds up.(computer projects statistics on Christianity)(Brief Article)(Column)
Mar 03, 1999; ... Decades ago I heard someone from IBM project computer size. In the 1950s, he said, it took a whole building to house one that punched holes in cards. In the 1960s, a computer would fit into a single room, duly air-conditioned. By the 1970s the reductions would continue, and a computer ...
Searching for connections.(Review)
Mar 10, 1999; ... When Sue Miller's latest novel opens, Jo and Daniel Becker are enjoying a leisurely afternoon on a lake. He is fishing and she is resting, half asleep, in the bow of the boat. The book's title is also its theme: While I Was Gone. This latest novel from the author of The Good Mother begins ...
Shackling a samaritan.(Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 unfair)(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 1999 ... The case of Frank Almonte shows why the 1996 immigration law should be changed if not repealed. Frank Almonte is a good man, an uptight man, a man of peace. He gives of himself. He has, for example, built hospitals. He recently raised $4 million for medical supplies, food and ...
Speaking up for public schools.(National Council of Churches suggests that public schools and Christians work together)
Mar 10, 1999; ... The saints are in retreat. Faced by what they consider moral as well as academic breakdown, some evangelical leaders are calling on Christians to withdraw their children from public schools and place them in private religious academies--or better yet--teach them at home. "Exodus 2000," ...
Moral collapse?(two academics analyze U.S. culture)
Mar 10, 1999 ... Conservative Christian political operative Paul Weyrich has bitterly complained that President Clinton's acquittal on impeachment charges of perjury and obstruction of justice symbolizes a collapse of American culture and morality. And he is not alone in that sentiment. The conclusion of ...
Indiana man charged with burning churches.
Mar 10, 1999 ... An Indiana man has been charged with burning seven churches in the southern part of that state since 1994, the Justice Department has announced. Two other people are also defendants in one of the arsons. Jay Scott Ballinger, 36, of Yorktown, Indiana, was charged February 21 with setting ...
Hare Krishna, abortion addressed by court.
Mar 10, 1999 ... The Supreme Court acted on two religion and ethics cases February 22, limiting Hare Krishna solicitations in one and, in the other, upholding Virginia's parental notification law for minors seeking abortions. In the Hare Krishna case, the justices, without comment, rejected an ...
Trial set for UMC pastor over same-sex unions.
Mar 10, 1999 ... Bishop C. Joseph Sprague, leader of the United Methodist Church in northern Illinois, said February 24 that Gregory Dell will be tried for violating church law by performing same-sex union ceremonies. Dell, a popular Chicago pastor, will go on trial March 25. He has been charged ...
Methodist peace prize goes to grandmothers.
Mar 10, 1999 ... An organization called the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo of Argentina will receive the 1999 World Methodist Peace Award later this year. The unanimous decision on the nomination marks the first time the award will be presented in Latin America, said Frances Alguire, chairperson of the ...
NCC expresses concern over East Timor.
Mar 10, 1999 ... The National Council of Churches has asked the United Nations and the Clinton administration to put pressure on Indonesia to stop supplying military weapons to paramilitary groups in East Timor. In letters to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Joan ...
Seeking to bridge rifts among Jews.
Mar 10, 1999 ... In 1994 the Synagogue Council of America, for 70 years North American Judaism's only interdenominational rabbinic voice, collapsed under the weight of internal bickering between the group's Orthodox and non-Orthodox members. Since then, the gulf between Judaism's traditional and more ...
Kurds invade Ecumenical Center.(World Council of Churches building in Geneva taken over by Kurds)(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 1999 ... About 50 Kurds invaded the World Council of Churches' Ecumenical Center in Geneva February 19 to demand that the WCC lobby for the release of their leader, Abdullah Ocalan. Ocalan, head of Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party, was captured and smuggled out of Kenya by Turkish agents on ...
Vatican intervened in Pinochet case.
Mar 10, 1999 ... The Vatican confirmed February 19 that it has intervened with the British government on behalf of Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator who is fighting extradition from England to Spain. "I can confirm that there has been a diplomatic intervention by the Holy See with the English ...
Briefly noted.
Mar 10, 1999 ... * Media mogul Ted Turner has apologized for insulting Pope John Paul II by telling a Polish joke and for saying the ban on adultery should be deleted from the Ten Commandments. A statement from the CNN founder sent to the Catholic League said he "regrets any offense [the] comments may have ...
A sense of ending.(death may be completion or it may be the end of life)(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 1999; ... Psalm 22 Isaiah 52:13-53:12 Hebrews 10:16-25 John 18:1-19:42 You have probably noticed that modern medicine does not excel at endings. When a terrible illness begins to take its course, medical technology throws every weapon at its disposal into the fray. Standard treatments ...
Eye of the Storm: A Pastor to the President Speaks Out.(Review)
Mar 10, 1999; ... Eye of the Storm: A Pastor to the President Speaks Out. By J. Philip Wogaman. Westminster John Knox, 144 pp., $12.00. Do Christian leaders have anything distinctive to say--or avoid saying--about the scandal in the White House and the impeachment of Bill Clinton? ...
Judgement Day at the White House: A Critical Declaration Exploring Moral Issues and the Political Use and Abuse of Religion.(Review)
Mar 10, 1999; ... Judgement Day at the White House: A Critical Declaration Exploring Moral Issues and the Political Use and Abuse of Religion. Edited by Gabriel Fackre. Eerdmans, 199 pp. paperback, $12.00. Do Christian leaders have anything distinctive to say--or avoid saying--about ...
Acolyte.(poem)
Mar 10, 1999; ... <Pre>One of the smokers,Tom Via or Franklin Furrow,would thumb his lighter openand pop the flame to the waxen wick,then he'd click it shut, hike up his choir robeand tuck the potent silver box back against his thigh.I held God's stick, fingering the trigger ...
Persuasion and discernment: The gifts of leadership.(Review)
Mar 10, 1999; ... The President as Leader: Appealing to the Better Angels of Our Nature. By Erwin C. Hargrove. University Press of Kansas, 240 pp., $25.00. The ancient cities of Jerusalem, Sparta and Athens can stand for three different types of leaders--charismatic, military and ...
Reservation.(poem)
Mar 10, 1999; ... the reserving of the Eucharist for the sick and the detained <Pre>Not those able but unable to click off the set,flick off the sheets, set down the cupof coffee and take up the wine. Not those traversing holy lake waterby raft, by boat, by skis, ...
Putting on new clothes.(Christian faith)(Brief Article)(Column)
Mar 10, 1999; ... Hans Christian Andersen tells about an emperor who was so fond of new clothes that he spent all his money on them. Alas, the emperor was so committed to his clothes that he neglected to take care of his people's needs. Instead, he spent all his time in his dressing room, admiring his ...
Philanthropy in the World's Traditions.(Review)
Mar 10, 1999; ... Philanthropy in the World's Traditions. Edited by Warren F. Illchman, Stanley N. Katz and Edward L. Queen II. Indiana University Press, 382 pp., $35.00. Long an area neglected by scholars, philanthropy has received a lot of attention recently. Those who work with ...
Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder.(Review)
Mar 10, 1999; ... Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder. By Richard Dawkins. Houghton Mifflin, 337 pp., $26.00. The famous observation by C.P. Snow that science and he humanities form two separate, often antagonistic cultures is still largely true. At ...
The Religious Art of Andy Warhol.(Review)
Mar 10, 1999; ... The Religious Art of Andy Warhol. By Jane Daggett Dillenberger. Continuum, 128 pp., $39.95. Andy Warhol's images of soup cans, brillo boxes, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and Mao Tse-tung have been silk-screened onto our consciousness. Warhol has often been portrayed ...
What Will You Do for an Encore?(Review)
Mar 10, 1999; ... What Will You Do for an Encore? By Robert Drake. Mercer University Press, $19. 95 paperback. Some 30 years ago Robert Drake, a professor of English at the University of Tennessee, began publishing a series of what he passed off, without noticeable objection from an ever-widening ...
Spending.(Review)
Mar 10, 1999; ... Spending. By Mary Gordon. Scribner, 301 pp., $24.00. The subtitle of this novel, "A Utopian Divertimento," is apt. It is a light composition exploring the idea of a wealthy man being the patron and muse of a woman artist--"a combination model, housekeeper, cook, secretary," ...
Cavedweller.(Review)(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 1999 ... Cavedweller. By Dorothy Allison. Dutton, 434 pp., $24.95. Redemption is the theme of this recent novel--the need for it, the courage it requires, and the time and effort that may be necessary to achieve it. Delia Byrd, lead singer with a rock band, returns to the small Georgia ...
Quarantine.(Review)(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 1999 ... Quarantine. By Jim Crace. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 243 pp., $25.00. This novel about Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness--and the six people who spend more than a month in close proximity to him--is both fascinating and puzzling. The book is fascinating because Crace is a ...
LETTERS.
Mar 10, 1999 ... Saving Christian colleges For many years I have been protesting the disengagement of colleges and universities from their Christian churches (See "Rest not in peace," by Ralph C. Wood, Feb. 3-10). The primary and unique task of the church is to proclaim the gospel of ...
Stewardship meets the P.O.(post office rates for mailings)(Brief Article)
Mar 10, 1999; ... Every month I look forward to reading "St. Paul Journey," the newsletter of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Davenport, Iowa. I turn first to Peter W. Marty's "Pastor's Column," of course. Last month the columnist alerted readers to something I had not known about before and believe will help ...
Limits of politics.
Mar 17, 1999 ... WHEN THE MAN who coined the term Moral Majority decides that the majority is gone and that the culture war is lost, people pay attention. Paul Weyrich, who launched Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed as religiopolitical operatives, recently declared that Americans' moral decline is so advanced ...
Drop-out Christianity.
Mar 17, 1999; ... IS THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT becoming sectarian? That was the question I found myself asking after Paul Weyrich, one of the founding fathers of the Moral Majority, recently called on Christians to "drop out" of American culture. "I believe that we have probably lost the culture war," Weyrich ...
Health and wholeness.(Granger Westberg's book on grief, "Good Grief")(Brief Article)
Mar 17, 1999; ... IN THE EARLY 1960s Granger Westberg gave a sermon on grief at Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago. The response from listeners indicated that it was something more than the usual sermon. He spoke of the experience of loss and the stages of grief. He provided not a ...
Lyons found guilty.(National Baptist Convention U.S.A. Inc. president Henry Lyons)(Brief Article)
Mar 17, 1999 ... THE PRESIDENT of one of the largest predominantly black denominations in the U.S. has been convicted of theft and racketeering and faces up to seven years in prison. On February 27, at the end of a monthlong trial, Henry Lyons, the 57-year-old leader of the National Baptist Convention ...
New president for Seventh-day Adventists.
Mar 17, 1999 ... A vice-president of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists has been elected the denomination's new president, replacing Robert S. Folkenberg, who resigned in February amid allegations that he was involved in fraudulent business dealings. Jan Paulsen, a native of Norway and the ...
Landmine treaty goes into effect.
Mar 17, 1999 ... Churches around the world rang their bells at noon March 1 as an international treaty aimed at outlawing and eventually eliminating antipersonnel landmines went into effect. At the Vatican, Pope John Paul II hailed the treaty and called for continued efforts to liberate the world entirely ...
Assisted-suicide examined in Oregon.
Mar 17, 1999 ... Fifteen terminally ill people in Oregon died in 1998 as a result of using the nation's only assisted-suicide law in the first year since it took effect, a study has found. State health officials said those who used the law were most often patients who had a strong desire to control how ...
Two Catholic educators decry regulations.
Mar 17, 1999 ... Two prominent Roman Catholic educators are warning that proposed rules for preserving the Catholic identity of the church's schools by strengthening episcopal control over Catholic colleges and universities "would be profoundly detrimental to Catholic higher education." The rules, drafted ...
Opus Dei plans to raise its profile.(new headquarters for Roman Catholic organization)(Brief Article)
Mar 17, 1999 ... The Roman Catholic organization Opus Dei plans to celebrate the year 2000 by opening a new 17-story, $42-million U.S. headquarters in the heart of New York City. The building, which should be completed by late 1999, is intended to give a higher national profile to Opus Dei, a group which ...
Church leaders protest Israeli housing policy.
Mar 17, 1999 ... More than two-dozen American church leaders have protested what they say is Israel's policy of unduly confiscating the Jerusalem residency cards of Palestinians, which legally ends their right to live in the city. The protest came in the form of a letter to Israel's ambassador to the U.S., ...
WCC urges action to end war in Congo.
Mar 17, 1999 ... The World Council of Churches has urged the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity to intervene to help end the ongoing civil war in Congo-Brazzaville. Some weeks ago an uneasy peace that was established in October 1997 collapsed when militias supporting the former president ...
Briefly noted.
Mar 17, 1999 ... * Fire destroyed the administrative offices of Lutheran Social Services of Metropolitan New York (LSS-MNY) the evening of February 18. The social ministry organization is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and recognized by the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. An ...
We have seen the Lord.(resurreciton of Jesus)(Brief Article)
Mar 17, 1999; ... Psalm 118:1-2,14-24 Acts 10:34-43 Colossians 3:1-4 John 20:1-18 WHY IS IT so difficult to sit down at a computer and write a piece about the resurrection of Jesus from the dead? Is it because belief in the resurrection and dependence on technology are incompatible? In his famous ...
Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith.(Review)
Mar 17, 1999; ... Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith. By Nora Gallagher. Knopf, 234 pp., $23.00. AFTER LEAVING the Episcopal Church at age 20, Nora Gallagher found herself drawn back to church in her 30s. She began to visit churches, but kept her faith a secret. "I didn't know how to ...