Features
To end the bloodshed: Why the "Peace Process" Broke Down
According to the consensus among American commentators, reflecting the views of the administration and Congress, a peace process that was on the verge of a breakthrough a few months ago has broken down because of the Palestinians’ intransigence. Instead of responding to a generous Israeli offer, they have turned to senseless violence, putting Israel under siege and bringing calamity on themselves.
No part of this oft-repeated formula corresponds to the reality on the ground.
Books
Horizontal mysteries
Bodies in Motion and at Rest: On Metaphor and Mortality, by Thomas Lynch...
The sound of faith
My Only Comfort: Death, Deliverance, and Discipleship in the Music of Bach, by Calvin R. StapertJohanne Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, by Christoph Wolff...
Meeting Pilate
Pontius Pilate, by Ann Wroe...
Stuck with liberalism
On Hallowed Ground: Abraham Lincoln and the Foundations of American History, by John Patrick Diggins...
Postmodern Christians
Postmodern Philosophy and Christian Thought (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion), edited by Merold Westphal...
Altered states
Lying Awake, by Mark Salzman...
Painted word
Painting the Word: Christian Pictures and Their Meanings, by John DrurySeeing Salvation: Images of Christ in Art, by Neil MacGregor with Erika Langmuir...
Women's space
Feminist Theology and Christian Theology: Cartographies of Grace, by Serene Jones...
The clerical life
A Bishop's Tale: Mathias Hovius Among His Flock in Seventeenth-Century Flanders, by Craig Harline and Eddy Put...
Slavery's legacy
Lay My Burden Down: Unraveling Suicide and the Mental Health Crisis Among African Americans, by Alvin Poussaint, M.D., and Amy Alexander...
Holy wars
The Crusades, c.1071-c.1291 (Cambridge Medieval Textbooks), by Jean Richard, translated by Jean Birrell...
Back to nature
Prodigal Summer, by Barbara KingsolverA Friend of the Earth, by T.C. Boyle...
Departments
In need of prayer
One of the theological puzzles with which I have struggled over the years is what the Puritans called “special providence”—that is, God’s miraculous intercession in human affairs in response to prayer. Every pastor knows the dilemma....
Experimental politics
One of the clichés of historians and civics textbooks is that the U.S. is an “experiment” in democracy....
Young minds
Five-year-old Andy is in the shower looking for ways to use an entire bottle of blue, no-tears Aussie shampoo (the kind with the kangaroo on the bottle) without washing his hair. “I’m getting clean for Easter!” he calls out....
End of an era
In an essay in the New York Times, written prior to the presidential election and its tension-filled aftermath, author Alan Ehrenhalt argues that the dominant fact of our political life during the late 1960s to the early 1990s, or what he...
Lost in cyberspace
There are more possible moves on a chess board than there are neutrons in our universe, I once read in a chess encyclopedia....
Lectionary
Smoothing the path (Luke 3:1-6)
I cherish the vision of what could have been a great moment in American poetry. One day my American literature professor told our class about Emily Dickinson, the quiet and reclusive woman who was satisfied to live in a circumscribed world in Amherst, Massachusetts.