Karen Long
Karen Long is an author at Religion News Service.
All Stories by Karen Long
NEWS FEATURE: Women’s sermons bend the gender of God
By Karen Long — January 1, 1999
c. 1999 Religion News Service UNDATED _ God, said Simone de Beauvoir, tends to look a lot like whoever is in power. But Rabbi Margaret Moers Wenig, a professor at Hebrew Union College in New York City, has a different visual. She preached: “God is a woman and she is growing older. “She moves more […]
NEWS FEATURE: Sister Serves Sentence for Army School Protest
By Karen Long — January 1, 1999
c. 1999 Religion News Service CLEVELAND _ Celebrities Martin Sheen and Susan Sarandon have done their bit in the campaign to close the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas. They have lent their famous names and attractive faces in videos and protest rallies. A world away from Hollywood, Sister Marge Eilerman has followed her convictions, […]
NEWS FEATURE: Once addicted to food, priest satisfies hunger for God
By Karen Long — January 1, 1999
c. 1999 Religion News Service CLEVELAND _ At dawn on a recent Monday, the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas watched the winter sun lift over the frozen Cuyahoga River and began to pray. She prayed for another day free of addiction. She prayed for the addicts who came to hear her preach downtown Sunday at Trinity Episcopal […]
NEWS FEATURE: Science standing at edge of altering future generations
By Karen Long — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Take a fetus. Fix a lethal gene in utero. Alter the inheritance of all that fetus’s descendants. The third step in this proposed sequence is the jaw-dropper. For the eight years medical researchers have pursued experimental human gene therapies _ with very modest results _ all their tinkering […]
NEWS FEATURE: Despite Vatican, U.S. theologians won’t end discussion of women priests
By Karen Long — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ With increasing strictness, Pope John Paul II and the Vatican agency charged with safeguarding doctrinal purity have insisted the Roman Catholic Church has no authority to ordain women priests. Indeed, the Vatican has even insisted the issue is no longer even open to debate. But like a tongue […]
NEWS FEATURE: Theologian: `Cheek-by-jowl’ society requires interfaith acceptance
By Karen Long — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service HIRAM, Ohio _ In Los Angeles, there are 241 Buddhist temples. In Boston, the most recent valedictorian and salutatorian at Harvard University were Hindu and Buddhist _ both born in the United States. In Hiram, Muslim students invited their entire college to mark Ramadan with them for the first time […]
NEWS FEATURE: Looking for God in all the `wrong’ places
By Karen Long — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Thomas More Beaudoin describes seeing “Rent” and playing bass in a rock band as two of his most meaningful spiritual experiences. He is not kidding. The hyperkinetic, red-haired scholar is author of “Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X”(Jossey-Bass). A passionate Roman Catholic, Beaudoin argues in […]
NEWS FEATURE: `Daughters of Thunder’ preserves legacy of black women preachers
By Karen Long — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Black folk idiom speaks of “sons of thunder,” those fiery preachers whose booming voices shook and shaped their communities. Now, historian Bettye Collier-Thomas has honored the black women ministers who risked ostracism, persecution and family opposition to speak from the pulpit. Some of the earliest of these women […]
NEWS STORY: Eastern rite Catholic body edges toward acceptance of married priests
By Karen Long — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service CLEVELAND _ The Byzantine-Ruthenian Catholic Church in the United States has moved a step closer to admitting married men to the priesthood. The small Eastern Rite Catholic church, with roots in the western Ukrainian region known as Ruthenia, has about 167,000 U.S. members While the church has always ordained married […]
NEWS FEATURE: Harvard divinity professor confounds cultural dividing lines
By Karen Long — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service CLEVELAND _ The Rev. Peter J. Gomes was a veteran Harvard divinity professor but a neophyte to talk radio last year when he sat down before an open microphone in Chicago. The hour was meandering quietly, so the radio host “decided to juice up the callers out there,” Gomes recalled. […]
NEWS FEATURE: Ex-prison chaplain writes of life among felons
By Karen Long — March 22, 1997
c. 1997 Religion News Service UNDATED _ The Rev. George R. Castillo left a comfortable pulpit in Shaker Heights, Ohio, to bring hope to felons _ men the rest of society hopes never to see again. The former pastor of East View United Church of Christ resigned nearly a quarter century ago to become a […]
NEWS FEATURE: Scholar sees alarming parallels between America and ancient Israel
By Karen Long — January 1, 1997
c. 1997 Religion news Service UNDATED _ Walter Brueggemann has spent a lifetime studying the Hebrew Bible. At age 63, he looks up from these texts and sees alarming parallels between contemporary America and ancient Israel during the destruction of Jerusalem in the sixth century B.C.”In the (Hebrew Bible), the tradition of greed finally destroyed […]
NEWS FEATURE: Carter’s new book most soul-searching, self-revealing
By Karen Long — January 1, 1997
c. 1997 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Former President Jimmy Carter deeply loves Jesus and his wife Rosalynn, although at times he has been estranged from both. In his 11th and”most difficult”book, Carter describes his spiritual and marital journeys in deeply personal detail, recounting squabbles with Rosalynn over an electric blanket and the painful divorces […]
Vacation Bible School isn’t what you remember
By Karen Long — January 1, 1997
c. 1997 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Gone are the lazy summer mornings when vacation Bible school meant flannel board stories of the life of Jesus and simple snacks of Ritz crackers and orange juice. Vacation Bible school has had to change with the times, adjusting to the hectic pace of two-career families. And while […]
NEWS FEATURE: Southern Baptists debating the influence of Calvinism on their faith
By Karen Long — January 1, 1997
c. 1997 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Southern Baptists have fought pitched battles over the Bible, women’s ordination and congregational autonomy. Now, there are signs a new theological tussle may be brewing in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination _ this time over the role and impact of historic Calvinist beliefs, especially the idea that salvation […]
