Walter Sundberg teaches church history at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn., and has written about religion, politics and trends in American religion.

Dale Soden is a history professor at Whitworth University in Spokane, Wash. He contributed a chapter on mainline Protestants, Catholics and Jews in the Pacific Northwest to Religion and Public Life in the Pacific Northwest: The None Zone.

First Place 4 Health is a Christian weight-loss program that began as a ministry at Houston’s First Baptist Church and now has groups in 12,000 congregations nationwide. The website has a search engine that allows a state-by-state search of existing groups and meetings. Vicki Heath is national director.

Church Health Center was founded by a United Methodist doctor seeking to fulfill the Christian obligation to care for the poor by providing health care. Among its programs is On the Move in Congregations, a six-week program of Scripture, meditations and health tips designed for individual congregations to use to improve their health and fitness. The communications […]

ChurchFitness.com helps churches establish and build fitness ministries. It provides equipment and training programs.

Read an article about the tensions between secular sports clubs and fitness centers that must pay taxes and their church counterparts (and sometimes competitors) that are tax-exempt.

Read a January 5, 2010 essay from The Tablet, an online magazine of Jewish culture, titled “Is Yoga Kosher?” It is about the struggle of a Modern Orthodox Jew to reconcile her yogic practice with her Judaism.

The Rabbinical Assembly, the national association of Conservative rabbis, on Jan. 1, 2010, launched an initiative encouraging its members to “adopt healthy eating, exercise and lifestyle habits,” as this JTA article reports. The initiative is called The Shalem Campaign. “Shalem” is the Hebrew word meaning “whole,” and the philosophy of the Shalem Campaign is holistic and also reflects […]

IBTS is a leading centre of post-graduate theological study for Baptist Christians and other evangelical believers. They emphasize environmental and eco-friendly study.