While gay marriage has gained greater acceptance across American society, many churches and faith communities struggle to welcome openly gay parishioners.
What does a chaplain tell a young couple whose faith in God has been rocked by a miscarriage? Sometimes, it's better just to listen than to talk.
Mepkin Abbey hosts monastic guests
A protest resulted in the founding of Emanuel AME Church, whose first leaders, including the Rev. Morris Brown, promptly ran afoul of the white authorities for asserting their independence and attempting to educate members of the black congregation.
Rural Mission, the faith-based charity located on Johns Island that rehabilitates homes for low-income residents and works with migrant farmers, now is scrambling to rebuild its operation before the 49-year-old nonprofit is forced to close its doors.
Have you ever done the right thing, but your heart said, “I’m just not feeling it?"
A new Christian book club launched this month by 1Charleston aims to further racial reconciliation in the church. Its first book? Plantation Jesus.
As a chaplain, I find no greater meaning for Independence Day than in our constitutional right to freedom of worship.
Do you want to try camping, but don’t own equipment? Or maybe learn a new language? Do you have toys or furniture you’d like to give away?
The young residents of Carolina Youth Development Center, separated from family and under the watchful eye of social services bureaucrats, often can feel diminished, ignored, invisible.
Earlier this month, I met a man wearing a shirt from Belgium.
The arms of congregation members at two West Ashley churches have gotten longer in recent years. They now reach as far as a half-mile along Ashley River Road and into the sanctuaries of their sister churches.
On June 11, Sessions removed asylum protections for domestic abuse and gang violence victims arriving at the border.
Have you ever noticed a resemblance between the church hypocrite and gym hypocrite?
The loved ones of all nine victims are trying to forge new paths and find their new voices, ones that hold memories tight but also lead to meaningful futures.
What happens to a church when its church is gone, at least for some time?
Everything is spinning or circling, or both. The moon goes round the Earth, the Earth goes round the sun, the sun goes round the galaxy, the galaxy goes round the universe.
Almost three years have passed since a racist gunman entered Emanuel AME Church's Bible study and gunned down nine black worshippers. A wide range of events, from dialogues about race to events that promote kindness, are scheduled to honor their lives.
The Baylor freshman two rows in front of me asked our English composition instructor only one question, “Do you accept late term papers?”
Shortly before the sun set on a recent Friday evening, cars pulled off King Street and into the parking lot of the Central Mosque of Charleston.
Peril can lurk around the corner for LGBTQ youth. As they come to terms with their sexual identity, some find themselves adrift, often endangered.
You may have seen the news last month about the white woman in Rialto, Calif., who waved at three black women carrying suitcases from a neighbor’s home.
A time-weathered building that sat abandoned for more than half a century in a blighted area of St. George could soon become upper Dorchester County’s newest historic building.
All they ask of us is that we will never see war as inevitable nor ever accept their deaths as routine.
Children in foster care suffer even more trauma and upheaval after their removal from biological families because the state is woefully short of quality foster homes to house them.
Advocates and journalists have paid critical attention to children in foster care. But once those children become adults and age out, they go largely forgotten, often cast into the world with little more than traumatic memories and mistrust to guide them.
More than 2,000 dolls will fill two levels at the Charleston Maritime Center for a four-day expo organized by the nonprofit B.R.I.G.H.T. Historical Organization. The expo, called “Black Footprints: Blacks Past and Present,” is meant to provide positive role models and build self-esteem among…
The congregation at Temple Sinai in Sumter is aging and shrinking. Only a handful of worshipers are left, barely enough to make a minyan, the quorum of 10 adults needed for collective prayer.
At the time of this writing, evacuees on Hawaii’s Big Island await a volcanic eruption that could send boulders the size of pianos flying through the air. The whole scenario has me wondering what sort of things would I bother to save if I had to evacuate.
I was only six months into my first pastor’s job in Hopland, Calif., when I contemplated quitting.
South Carolina has a rich legacy of different sorts of houses of worship, but many of them, particularly in rural areas, face challenges due to deferred maintenance and dwindling congregations. There's a new push to change that, starting with a coffee table book.
For LGBTQ youth, the school prom can be a problem.
Two Charleston-area women will present the 5th annual "Listen To Your Mother" lineup at The Schoolhouse in West Ashley.
In the years I've spent behind a pulpit, I made a conscious effort never to know anything about the contributions made by my parishioners.
The Rev. Anthony Thompson was delivering another powerful sermon during the Charleston Baptist Association's annual meeting.
In a three-week Holocaust simulation this spring, each of her Mount Pleasant students followed the journey of a real person with biographical details drawn from the historic record.
The very first time anyone ever called me “pastor” was during the early '80s at First Baptist Church of Hopland, Calif.
Those visiting Drayton Hall, one of South Carolina's premier plantation museums, should have a dramatically better experience today than a year ago.
North Charleston-based Unity Church will take part in an international interfaith event undertaken simultaneously by religious institutions in 16 cities nationally, and in Faisalabad, Pakistan; Kashmir, India; and three cities in Uganda.
It’s not too late to make brunch plans, especially if your idea of brunch includes Irish soda bread, a pipe organist and historical commentary by Alphonso Brown of Gullah Tours.
In the early 1980s, Becky and I had only a passing acquaintance with fellow student Benjamin “Scott” Allen and his wife, Lydia.
The Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina will host a two-day conference, open to the public, titled “Memory, Monuments, and Memorials.”
Marcus Eriksen’s journey to being half of a dynamic duo fighting plastic pollution had its genesis when he was a marine serving in Kuwait during the first Gulf War in 1991.
It was a quick jaunt — barely more than 24 hours — but was one that local NAACP leader Dot Scott felt was important to make.
In 1980, my wife Becky and I were living the idyllic newlywed life on the sheltered campus of Golden Gate Seminary in Mill Valley, Calif.
Patrons of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra will be graced on April 13-15 with the dulcet tones of the 1686 ex-Nachez Stradivarius violin, lent by John Constable and played by CSO Concertmaster Yuriy Bekker.
The annual Holocaust Remembrance commemoration is set for 2:30 p.m. Sunday, April 15, and will feature keynote speaker and author Marion Blumenthal Lazan.
If it’s true that one never forgets their first love, then perhaps it’s also true that a pastor never forgets his or her first church.
Royal Baptist raises $25K for museum
Joanne Ellison of Mount Pleasant founded a new ministry almost two decades ago to draw together women of all Christian denominations.
Thanks to the legislative victories of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, African-Americans can vote, sit anywhere on a bus or in a movie theater, use all public water fountains and sleep in the hotel bed of their choosing.
In the small grassy courtyard inside Aldersgate United Methodist Church, an unlikely group of Christians gathered to celebrate Easter and a new beginning of their own.
The tapping on the door was more a defeated plea than a knock. The sound focused inward so as not to draw the attention of curious ears.
