Monday's News & Ideas - 5/1/2023

Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of ‘When Bad Things Happen to Good People,’ dies at 88
NPR: Rabbi Harold Kushner, who never strayed from answering life’s most vexing questions about loss, goodness and God, and by doing so, brought comfort to people across the world, died on Friday while in hospice care in Canton, Mass. He was 88.

Black Protestant church still vital despite attendance drop
Associated Press: The wide empty spaces in pews between parishioners at a Sunday service at Zion Baptist Church in South Carolina’s capital highlight a post-pandemic reality common among many Black Protestant churches nationwide.

Mike Pence is on a mission
Deseret News: Pence has spent his entire career making his devout religious beliefs the center of his identity. And until relatively recently, that approach has had quite a bit of success in American politics.

One in four pastors plan to retire before 2030*
Christianity Today: America’s churches are struggling to find a new generation of pastors as the current generation prepares to step aside.

20 years ago, Switchfoot unleashed the riff that changed Christian rock
Religion News Service: Switchfoot was always meant for more than CCM.

The Spark

What emojis can’t express: How handwriting reveals our true selves
Neil Serven ponders the lost art of penmanship in Lit Hub.

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