Relationships and Community on United States

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The United States is Like Samaria

Author

Keywords

Scripture

Jeremiah 29:4-7 , 2 Kings 17:24-33, Isaiah 1:18-20, John 4:4-26, Acts 8:4-8, 14-17, Psalm 46:1-2

The United States retains a basic respect for religion though it may be following European trends: surveys show a steady rise in the “nones” (now one-third of those under the age of thirty), that is, ...

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Gracious God, you have placed us in a

Author

Chip Hardwick

Keywords

Gracious God, you have placed us in a culture that seems more and more filled with politics. Forgive us for every time we respond to these politics with decisions that do not honor Christ. Pardon us f...

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A Short History of World Religions in America (other than Christianity)

Author

Barbara Brown Taylor

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 56:6-7, Ruth 1:16-17, 1 Kings 8:41-43, Acts 2:5-6, Ephesians 2:14-15, Psalm 22:27

By many accounts the first Muslim in America was Estevancio of Azamor, a Moroccan guide for a Spanish expedition in 1528 that landed in Florida. A couple of centuries later, as many as a third of the ...

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Father God–You invite us to come as a

Author

Richard Herman

Scripture

Psalm 23:4, James 5:16, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, Isaiah 61:1-2, Amos 5:24

Father God–You invite us to come as a child to his/her daddy. You invite us to open our souls to You. You invite us to lay our desires before You. You are fond of us, Your children–so we come to You h...

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Our Lord—Today we have given You praise

Our Lord—Today we have given You praise and thanks for who You are and what You’ve done for us. Now, we also give You our needs—for we are not self-sufficient. We need You! We pray for those dear to u...

liturgy

God–our Father, Lord and indwelling

Author

Richard Herman

Scripture

Philippians 4:6-7, 1 Timothy 2:1-2, Psalm 133:1, 2 Corinthians 9:13-14, Matthew 28:19-20

God–our Father, Lord and indwelling Spirit of grace and power: Thank you for hearing us when we pray whether in songs of rejoicing or through tears of sorrow. Thank you for gifts–for the gifts of musi...

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Author

David Putman & Ed Stetzer

Keywords

Scripture

Amos 8:11-12 , 2 Chronicles 7:14 , Nehemiah 13:10-11, Hebrews 10:24-25 , Matthew 9:37-38 , Psalm 122:1

Since 1991, the adult population in the United States has grown by 15%. During that same period, the number of adults who do not attend church has nearly doubled, rising from 39 million to 75 million—...

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Author

Jonathan Walton

Keywords

Violence

In 2015, the Guardian reported that 1,134 people were killed by police in the United States. And that number is only an estimate because it is still not mandatory to report these deaths to the Justice...

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Stealing Indian Land

Author

George Yancey

Keywords

To illustrate how the racial oppression of previous generations has benefited European Americans, we can look at the fate of Native Americans. When Europeans arrived in North America, Indians owned al...

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Racial Division in America

Author

Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith

Keywords

While I was sitting at a stoplight a few blocks from my [Emerson’s] home in Minneapolis, reflecting on the recent rash of drive-by shootings in the area, three African-American teens clad in the urban...

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Author

Mark A. Noll

Keywords

Today more Christian workers from Brazil are active in cross-cultural ministry outside their homelands than from Britain or from Canada. More than 10,000 foreign Christian workers are today laboring i...

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Curious About Oregon

Author

D. L. Mayfield

Keywords

The Latin root of curiosity means “cure,” which makes me wonder if it isn’t a way to heal some of our oldest sicknesses. Like, perhaps, the “amnesia of affluence” that theologians point out in the Bib...

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Don't Be Ridiculous

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Mark 6:1-4, Luke 4:14-30, Matthew 13:53-58, 1 Samuel 16:10-13, John 7:3-5, 1 Timothy 4:12

Sometimes, older relatives find it hard to grasp the success of their younger family members. Shortly after Woodrow Wilson’s victory in the 1912 election, he visited his elderly aunt. “What are you do...

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Rising GNP and Lowering GNH

Author

Don Everts

Keywords

There has been a paradigm shift going on in neighborhoods in the United States since the end of WWII. For decades before the 1940s, neighborhoods were places where people were known and were active. W...

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Troubling Statistics about Mental Health in our Youth

Author

Max Lucado

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 41:10 , 1 Kings 19:4-8, Jeremiah 29:11, John 14:27, Philippians 4:6-7 , Psalm 34:17-18

Most alarming is the absence of peace among our youth. Research from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is showing an epidemic of mental health problems among eighteen- to twenty-four-year...

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The President Vouches for Us

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

John 16:33, Daniel 3:16–30, Exodus 14:13–14 , John 16:33, Romans 8:28, 31–34, Psalm 91:1–4

Max Lucado tells a true story showing that God's determination to shape His followers proves stronger than Satan's most persistent efforts to discourage them. What the enemy plans for destruc...

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To Be A Child of God Means Access

Author

Timothy Keller

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 8:4

To be a child of God means access. We know God is attentively listening to us and watching us. Think about what it takes to get in to see the president of the United States. Only people who merit his ...

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The Census Taker and the Country Woman

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 18:13, James 1:19, 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, Proverbs 18:2, Proverbs 15:23, Ecclesiastes 5:2, Genesis 11:7-9, 2 Timothy 2:24-25

Communicating with people is often easier said than done. Take for instance this apocryphal story of the census taker who had to venture many miles down a country road to reach a cabin. As the man pul...

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Prayers of Lament for Times of Violence: A Liturgical Response

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We are again in a moment of intense anger, fear, and sorrow. We've been here too often, lately. In September 2025, prominent activist Charlie Kirk was killed in front of a crowd in Utah. This ca...

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Author

David Putman & Ed Stetzer

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 29:13, Malachi 3:10 , Exodus 20:8-10, Hebrews 10:24-25, Luke 4:16, Psalm 84:10

The Barna Research Group reports that in the United States about 10 million self-proclaimed, born-again Christians have not been to church in the last six months, apart from Christmas or Easter.

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Dying from the Unspoken War Back Home

Author

John M. Perkins

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 2:11-25 , Amos 5:21-24, Isaiah 1:16-17 , Luke 4:16-21 , Romans 12:17-21 , Psalm 34:18-19

I was sixteen when a white deputy sheriff shot and killed my twenty-five-year-old brother, Clyde, in New Hebron, Mississippi, where we had grown up. Clyde had returned home from fighting in World War ...

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Has Religion been a Force for Evil in Human History

Author

Francis S. Collins

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 3:7-10, Isaiah 58:6-10, Micah 6:6-8, Matthew 23:27-28 , James 1:26-27, Psalm 146:7-9

A major stumbling block for many earnest seekers is the compelling evidence throughout history that terrible things have been done in the name of religion. This applies to virtually all faiths at some...

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The Persistent Census-Taker

Author

John Maxwell

Keywords

If we want to connect with people, we can be like the census taker who had driven many miles down a remote country road to reach a mountain cabin. As he pulled up, a woman sitting on the porch yelled ...

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A New Direction for Family Discipleship

Author

Brian Dembowczyk

Keywords

If the Prof is 10 min late... I was in my freshman year in college, and Statistics was the final class before Thanksgiving break. When the professor was ten minutes late, I and several others got up ...

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Crisis & Peace: An Unexpected Connection

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Like many of you, I have been praying for those affected by Hurricane Ian along the Eastern shore of the United States. I've also continued to pray for Ukraine and for Russia, that peace would com...

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Laundry Love

Author

Don Everts

Keywords

Greg and some of his friends from church were zealous to pursue the common good of their community, Ventura, California. Instead of coming up with their own ideas of how to do this, they started by li...

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Institutional Racism: The Byproduct of Historical Racism

Author

George Yancey

Keywords

The ways that social structures and institutions systematically work against the interest of people of color is called institutional racism. Institutional racism and historic racism are not unrelated ...

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A Little Girl and The Founding of World Vision

Author

Soong-Chan Rah

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 25:35-40, James 1:19-27, Luke 10:33-37, John 21:15-17, 1 John 3:17-18, Ruth 2:8-12, Acts 9:36-42, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Luke 6:38

In 1947 huge crowds came to hear a thirty-two-year-old Californian preach at mass evangelistic rallies throughout China. Although Bob Pierce had no knowledge of Chinese language or culture, his messag...

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The Cross as an Enduring Image

Author

N. T. Wright

Keywords

Scripture

Hebrews 12:2, Colossians 2:14-15, Philippians 2:8, Galatians 6:14, 1 Corinthians 1:18

In 2000, the National Gallery in London put on a millennial exhibition entitled “Seeing Salvation.” That was a case in point—especially remembering that European countries tend to be far more “secular...

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The Solution to Divisions

Author

James Bryan Smith

Keywords

The solution to gender, race and social divisions is not to eradicate our differences but to see them in light of Jesus. The Pentecostal movement in the United States in the early twentieth century wa...

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