In the World

Steve Thorngate on public life and culture
Church door from inside

Undermining the church? Or being it?

The problem with John Podesta's outraged critics isn't their tone. It's their narrow understanding of church—and organizing.

A cruel line that served no purpose except cruelty itself

Trump's point was about Russia and cybersecurity. Why did his (theoretical) hacker need to be fat?

When calls for "respect" are really demands for something deeper

Christians can and should respect many things. Our allegiance, however, is another matter.

"Leveraging" religious liberty vs. simply supporting it

Jeffrey MacDonald reports on an interesting development: left-of-center religious groups invoking religious liberty much as right-of-center groups have in recent years. A church wants to install solar panels despite the objections of a local historic district commission; elsewhere, groups serving the homeless are looking to faith-based partners to protect their ability to do so. The story provides a lens on the classic questions about what counts as religious exercise and who decides. Yet it’s a little odd that MacDonald’s framing takes as given this very recent use of the term “religious liberty”—more strategy than principle, an argument to advance a cause.

Third group

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