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United Brethren in Christ:

United Brethren in Christ: see Evangelical United Brethren Church.

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Trophies of Grace? The "art" collecting activities of United Brethren in Christ missionaries in nineteenth century Sierra Leone. (African Arts)

Brothers in Christ; Orthodox Christianity.(Deft diplomacy averts a schism) (The Economist (US))

Brothers in Life, Brothers in Christ.(Interview) (Insight on the News)

Zimbabwe cleric urges judges to be impartial. (News).(CANADIAN WRITER Yann Martel, winner of the 2002 Booker Prize, sets up his delightful story with a clever "author's note" in which an elderly man in Pondicherry, India, tells the author, "I have a story that will make you believe in God." With little fanfare, he hooks the reader into a postmodern novel, with stories within the story, questions about the veracity of the story or storyteller, and an ending that teaches a lesson about belief. Narrator and protagonist Piscine Patel, who shortens his name to Pi after being teased about the pronunciation of his first name (rhymes with hissing), grows up near the Pondicherry Zoo, which his father has founded, owned and directed. Pi offers fascinating facts and insights into zoo animals, which become especially pertinent in the story's second part. In an arresting narrative voice Pi writes, "I was fourteen years old--and a contented Hindu--when I met Jesus Christ on a holiday." The boy ends up becoming not only a Christian but a Muslim as well, while remaining a Hindu. His three religious instructors meet with his parents to protest such audacity and soon get into an argument among themselves. Finally his father, who is not religious, says, "I suppose that's what we're all trying to do--love God." While this may sound simplistic and naive, it fits with two of the book's themes: that all life is interdependent, and that we live and breathe via belief. Elsewhere Pi claims atheists as "[his] brothers and sisters of a different faith. ... they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them--and then they leap." The bulk of the book concerns the 227 days Pi spends adrift in the Pacific Ocean after the Japanese freighter carrying his family and many zoo animals sinks. He is the lone human survivor on a 26-foot lifeboat, which he shares with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, a seasick orangutan and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Soon only Pi and the tiger remain, and Pi must find a way to survive not only hunger, the elements and shark-infested waters but also the constant fear that Richard Parker will make him his lunch. Martel carries off this section with aplomb. He combines dramatic episodes, scientific knowledge, well-written hallucinatory passages, humor and gruesome detail to move the story along. Since the entire book is told in flashback, we know how things will turn out, yet the suspense still grips us. The writing here is deceptively simple. Martel lets the winsome narrative voice and the intriguing plot carry us, all the while winking as he tosses out thoughts on the kinds of metaphysical questions humans have pondered for centuries. The story may not make us believe in God, but it certainly helps us enjoy asking whether we should. Cephas Mukandi) (The Christian Century)

"He was pretty good in there today": reviving the Macho Christ in Ernest Hemingway's "Today is Friday" and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. (Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality)

Christian unity and our identity as Disciples of Christ. (The Ecumenical Review)

Becoming a true peace church: to be a sign of Christ, U.S. Catholics must learn to resist militarism. (Paths to Peace Christianity). (National Catholic Reporter)

Pope in America: 'Christ our Hope'.(Pope Benedict XVI)(Editorial) (Catholic Insight)

The call to joy: Lent is the time to follow Christ and find our true selves.(LENT 2007) (National Catholic Reporter)

A letter from Athens to the Christian churches, networks and communities: come holy spirit, heal and reconcile: called in Christ to be reconciling and healing communities.(Conference on Mission and Evangelism) (International Review of Mission)

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See more Encyclopedia articles on: Protestant Denominations