Coming To Peace

the abbey from a distance

One June morning, in 2002, the bells at a Benedictine abbey in northwest Missouri tolled dozens of times The 83 rings was not random, coming a day after a murderous rampage inside Conception Abbey. The number represented the combined number of years two slain monks had lived at the abbey, which is located about 100…

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Using An Old Custom To Lure New Parishioners

For the last half century, membership numbers in Mainline U.S. Protestant churches have gone mostly in one direction — down. Protestants once constituted a large majority of the American population. And Mainline churches — the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Church of Christ, the Christian…

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(Faith)fully Serving Listeners

Zedek talks with Hill before a show

Virtually every Sunday morning for more than two decades, the Rev. Robert Lee Hill has left his Brookside home before sunrise to make his way to the studios of KCMO radio. The live talk show he co-hosts with Rabbi Michael Zedek and Bill Scholl of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas has also become…

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A Community Rebounds, Copes After Targeted Murders

Since that bloody Sunday in April 2014, when a neo-Nazi targeted Kansas City’s Jewish community, this area’s 18,000 Jews have been adjusting to the reality that evil forces still want them dead. The three people he murdered — two at the Jewish Community Center, one at nearby Village Shalom — turned out to be Christians,…

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West Meets East At Olathe High School

Young ladies move in sync as part of their South Indian dance. (Binita Dahal | Flatland)

Sebhnem Heller, who is originally from Turkey, came to the Asian Cultural Festival in Olathe all the way from Omaha. “I got this rare opportunity to know other countries’ culture,” said Heller, who brought her parents with her. “I came here last year and enjoyed the ambiance of the diversity of people and culture here.”…

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