The Pastor’s Bookshelf: Why Reading Matters for Ministry By Austin Carty Eerdmans, pp. 182, $19.99 As an Amazon Associate, TLC earns from qualifying purchases. Review by Samuel Adams I remember being at a casual lunch with some recently graduated seminary classmates and one of our beloved professors, an accomplished theologian and a priest who had spent … [Read more...] about Forming a Weighty Soul
Features
Painting Exclusively in Green
Our Last Best Act: Planning for the End of Our Lives to Protect the People and Places We Love By Mallory McDuff Broadleaf Books, pp. 211, $18.99 As an Amazon Associate, TLC earns from qualifying purchases. Review by Douglas LeBlanc In a brisk and inquisitive style, Mallory McDuff confronts a question we all must face: What should be done with our body after we … [Read more...] about Painting Exclusively in Green
Compassion for the Suffering
Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Story of Compassion in the Face of Fear By Michael J. O'Loughlin Broadleaf Books, pp. 281, $28.99 As an Amazon Associate, TLC earns from qualifying purchases. Review by Michael Tessman In recent years we have lived to witness the deaths of over 1 million people in the United States (6.3 million worldwide) from COVID. … [Read more...] about Compassion for the Suffering
2022 in Review: The Anglican Communion
The year in review for the Episcopal Church was published yesterday. By Mark Michael For the first time in 14 years, 2022 brought a Lambeth Conference, with more than two-thirds of the Anglican Communion’s bishops gathering for sessions focused on “Being God’s Church for God’s World.” Longstanding divisions over human sexuality, which also flared up in England and … [Read more...] about 2022 in Review: The Anglican Communion
A Legacy of Kindness: St. John’s Church, Elizabeth, N.J.
By Charles Hoffacker After many years away, I decided last fall to visit the graves of my forebears in New Jersey and to worship at what was their parish for generations: St. John’s Church in Elizabeth, New Jersey. St. John’s is located in the historic heart of Elizabeth, an area known as Midtown. The seat of Union County and New Jersey’s fourth-largest city, Elizabeth is … [Read more...] about A Legacy of Kindness: St. John’s Church, Elizabeth, N.J.
2022 in Review: The Episcopal Church
The year in review for the Anglican Communion will be published tomorrow. By Kirk Petersen As 2022 began, it seemed likely that the 80th General Convention would supplant the pandemic as the dominant focus of TLC’s coverage of the Episcopal Church. But the pandemic reasserted itself, and fundamentally transformed GC80. The triennial meeting of the church’s governing … [Read more...] about 2022 in Review: The Episcopal Church
Heaven in Ordinary
Review by Gavin Dunbar For the heirs of 19th-century aesthetic romanticism, the Reformation’s iconoclasm is a rich source of Duffyesque lament for the stripping of altars and Dearmerite fantasies of a truly tasteful reformed English Catholicism. Such laments and fantasies fit into liberal privileging of experience over doctrine, but they also appeal to the conservative … [Read more...] about Heaven in Ordinary
Expecting at Christmas
By Bonnie Nichols Scott It was my first year of divinity school, and as winter came, twinkling lights were strung around campus, church bells rang, and I found myself thinking constantly of Mary. I was a relatively recent convert to Christianity, and each liturgical season felt completely new. Unlike many Episcopalians I knew, for me the rhythms of tradition — lighting … [Read more...] about Expecting at Christmas