(RNS) — Hospitalized with a serious illness, a 55-year-old lawyer found himself taking stock. He’d gone to Ivy League schools, supported a beautiful family, ran a prosperous business, bought a second home on the coast. But what had he contributed? What had been the point of it all? Lying alone in the stillness of the wee hours, he remembered that what he’d really wanted to do was become a teacher. “So what do you do with that, when you realize a life has been spent in a way that wasn’t the best?” asked Jim Rawlings, who retired recently as head of Duke University Hospital’s pastoral services staff. “Most people live in such denial that anything can happen to them. It’s one of the times they confront their mortality. And there’s anxiety often,” says Rawlings, who spent more than 30 years as a hospital chaplain. A common perception of clergy who work in hospitals is that they are there to perform last rites for the terminally ill, or prompt 11th-hour conversions. But … [Read more...]

(RNS) — In 1978, photographer Jim Judkis got a big break. People magazine asked him to photograph Fred Rogers, the beloved public television host of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” which was in its 10th year. When he arrived to see Rogers, Judkis was nervous. “You suddenly realize you’re in the presence of a known celebrity. I said, ‘Hello, Mister Rogers,’” Judkis said. “He smiled and reached out his hand to shake mine. He said, ‘Please call me Fred.’ It immediately put me at ease. Wow. He’s a normal guy.”Over the next few decades, he photographed Rogers for People, The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Sunday magazine and Pittsburgh Magazine. Judkis’ most famous photo: an award-winning photograph he took of Rogers smiling as he looks, face-to-face, at a disabled child, who cradles Rogers’ face in his hands.When the show went off the air, Judkis put the negatives of his photos of Rogers into storage and forgot about them. His photos are now out of storage and on display at the … [Read more...]

(RNS) — The past year has been filled with stories of alleged sexual misconduct and abuse by Protestant Christian pastors. Bill Hybels retired early from the influential Chicago-area megachurch he founded, Willow Creek Community Church, after being accused of sexual harassment by several women connected to the church. Andy Savage, a megachurch preacher in Memphis, Tenn., resigned after admitting to having an inappropriate sexual contact with a teenager when he was a youth pastor. And a landmark investigation by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News revealed that more than 250 people who worked or volunteered in Southern Baptist churches have been charged with sex crimes over the past 20 years.Most Protestant churchgoers feel they and their children are safe from abuse or harassment at their churches. But many also seem unsure whether new cases of abuse are yet to be revealed. A new survey found that 1 in 3 Protestant Christian churchgoers think there are many … [Read more...]

(RNS) — Nearly a quarter of Canadians today say they have no religious affiliation — about the same as in the U.S. But a forthcoming book by two Canadian researchers says that it is easier to be a “none” in Canada. “It’s more normal in Canada to say you have no religion,” said Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme, a professor of sociology at the University of Waterloo and author, with Joel Thiessen, professor of sociology at Ambrose University, of “None of the Above: Having No Religion in Canada and the U.S.” “In Canada, there is a more accepting social environment for leaving religion. There’s less of a social stigma,” added Thiessen. The two researchers decided to study nones in Canada when they found most of the information about the rapidly expanding group of religiously unaffiliated came from the U.S. “We wanted to see what was similar, what was different,” said Wilkins-Laflamme. The big difference, they found, is that the decline in religious affiliation started earlier in … [Read more...]

(RNS) — When the Rev. Emmy Kegler heard her friend Rachel Held Evans had died earlier this month after a sudden illness, she offered a prayer. Then Kegler got together with other friends who had known Evans, a popular progressive Christian writer and speaker, to share their memories and process their grief. As she walked to her car afterward, she wondered what the future would hold. Who would fill the void their friend had left behind? “Who is going to be our Rachel now?” she asked. Kegler isn’t the only one asking. Since Evans’ untimely death on May 4 at age 37, her readers and friends have shared stories of her impact and her kindnesses toward them online — sparking renewed interest in her work and putting her 2015 book “Searching for Sunday” on this past weekend’s New York Times bestseller list. Along with them, progressive Christian scholars are also considering Evans’ legacy and what’s next for their movement without one of its most prominent and beloved … [Read more...]