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A Few Frames from 2006: Family Values and 9/11 as Viewed by Hollywood

FEBRUARY 2007: ESSAY by Joan Zwagerman Curbow If you have missed most of the movies of 2006, a number of them were available on DVD before the end of the year. Each of these films has garnered their share of attention in Hollywood, but for those of us outside the soundstage, they offer more than award nominations. Without bludgeoning, they touch upon two volatile issues--family values and 9/11--and this year Hollywood trumped the political arena by exploring these themes with…
Joan Zwagerman Curbow
February 15, 2007
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Opening the Door

Norman Kolenbrander I've decided it's time to "come out of the closet." No, I am not about to leave my loving wife of forty-four years for a same-sex partner. I'm coming out to stand in solidarity with gays and lesbians who have all too often been pitched out of the church either by default or design. As a pastor in the Reformed Church in America, I seek to be guided by the word of God as expressed in scripture and…
Norman Kolenbrander
February 15, 2007
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Theology and Women in the In-Between

FEBRUARY 2007: REVIEW by Miriam Ippel I never really left college. After my undergraduate years, I served in various ministry and administrative roles in higher education. I was privileged to work with and be mentored by many women with advanced degrees who have blazed trails in their fields. I found their stories encouraging, though I did not always resonate with their experiences. This began to change as I discerned a call to ministry and thus further theological education. As I…
Miriam Ippel
February 15, 2007
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Mother and Father

David Schelhaas The words father and mother come from similar roots, and the roots most likely come from the sounds an infant child makes before the child can talk. Papa, daddy, mama, ma, mom, and the variations in many different languages all seem to have been derived from the sounds that infant children make. The word mother, as far as we know, is derived from the sound a child makes while nursing or suckling at the mother's breast. To mother…
Dave Schelhaas
February 15, 2007
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Letters to the Editors

Why Pastors Leave Church Dear Sirs: Why did Barbara Brown Taylor leave a parish pulpit to fill an endowed chair at a Georgia college, teaching in the religion department? The Reverend Dr. Douglas Brouwer in his review of Taylor's memoir Leaving Church writes wistfully of losing such an excellent preacher from the parish. He offers several cogent answers but misses the main reason Taylor no longer is a parish preacher. She adamantly wants to preach on topics forbidden in local…
Jack R. Van Ens and Al Hoksbergen
February 1, 2007
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In Defense of Grey’s Anatomy

JANUARY 2007: AS WE SEE IT by Margaret Jenista Every great love story has a beginning. Once upon a time, Cinderella didn't know Prince Charming, but then (several mice, a pumpkin and fairy godmother later) Cinderella is in love. We are instructed to imagine such a love by the words, "happily ever after"--a state of being cemented forever by marriage, several children, even more grandchildren until ol' Cinders and Charms are rocking their way into retirement on the front porch…
Meg Jenista
January 16, 2007
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Beyond Shouting: Religion and Science in Conversation

Scott Hoezee In the beginning, a few Renaissance geniuses used belief in God as the impetus to launch an investigation of the universe. Their development of science changed history. At the turn of the millennium on December 31, 1999, New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis asserted that the single most important development of the last one thousand years was the rise of the scientific method through the experimental testing of hypotheses. Lewis may well have been right. Name almost any…
January 16, 2007
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Martin Luther King, Jr. and the War on Terror

JANUARY 2007: ESSAY by Hak Joon Lee Editors' Note: Contributing editor Hak Joon Lee is associate professor of ethics and community at New Brunswick Theological Seminary in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He is also the author of the recently released book We Will Get to the Promised Land: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Communal-Political Spirituality(Pilgrim Press, 2006). This excerpt is reprinted by permission and continues Perspectives' recent look at issues surrounding the war on terror, the war in Iraq, and related…
Hak Joon Lee
January 16, 2007
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POETRY by Charles Rampp

rush creek with carp after i got the car and mother moved back to nearby town and found a fourth husband, she wanted me to come to supper, her brand of chili soup. it was spring and i hadn't seen her since grandpa's funeral three years past--the undertaker was paid now. i had some savings-- a new experience. she wanted me to be a partner in the diner her new man had bought for her-- seven hundred would do it,…
Charles Rampp
January 16, 2007