Latest Articles

“Lo and behold there is a religious left,” declared an article in Slate. “The religious left is back,” announced the Washington Post. The evidence? An increase in blogging and organizing, as well as best-selling books by Jim Wallis, Michael Lerner and and Jimmy Carter.The rise of the religious left provides a natural journalistic lead because it plays against type. The persistent assumption, at least among mainstream media, is that Christians are politically active only on the conservative side.

The vase had once been a fine antique with a cream glaze and blue Japanese design, but now it was damaged. It stood amid the finer pieces, a mass of cracks, crudely glued together with what was obviously the wrong type of adhesive—everywhere the 20 or so pieces met one another, glue had bubbled out yellow as it dried, creating the effect of scabrous scars.“Why don’t you get rid of that one?” I asked my mother. “Never,” she replied. “It’s the most valuable piece of pottery we have in this house.” Then she told me the story of the cracked vase.

"Pay attention: These are our values." That’s what we’re saying when we make decisions about spending money or ask others to spend money on our behalf....

Genealogists tell us that many U.S....

When my daughter was in grade school, her teacher included a unit on table manners. The rule that amused me was, “When served food, you should never ask, ‘What is this?’” I don’t think I’ve asked that question aloud, but I’ve certainly thought it, especially at potlucks.

Last summer I was invited by a hospice chaplain to accompany him on a visit to the family of Maria Durand de Perez, a Mexican woman who had died a few weeks earlier in the border town of San Ysidro...

It was a cold, damp day of the kind that the Irish call summer....

Reading this book prompted a minor conversion on my part....

The freedom riders have suffered from many misconceptions and distortions about their role in the civil rights struggle....

"In my time,” one of Saul Bellow’s characters muses, “parents didn’t hesitate to speak of death. What they seldom mentioned was sex....

In this wonderful small book, Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, head and heart of the Reformed Church in America, giv...

In 2004, about a year into Operation Iraqi Freedom, as the insurgency was gathering steam, journalist Deborah Scranton was offered a chance to embed herself with a military company that included me...

There are a priori reasons to dislike Superman Returns. Superman is always a little campy in his tights and red Underoos....

"O sing to the Lord a new song,” the psalmist urges. I’ve always imagined someone in the back pew saying, “There’s nothing wrong with the old song.”...

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) provided a pleasant respite from the normal summer news of denominational wrangling over homosexuality. The PCUSA General Assembly actually talked about God....

Hot air: Although Americans drive just 30 percent of the world’s nearly 700 million motor vehicles, they account for nearly half of the greenhouse gases emitted by vehicles worldwide. The reason? Americans drive farther and their cars get lower mileage and use fuel with more carbon content (Los Angeles Times, June 28).

This spring HBO debuted a television series, Big Love, that features a likable polygamous family in Utah. An article in a March issue of Newsweek, headlined “Polygamists Unite!” quotes a polygamy activist saying, “Polygamy is the next civil rights battle.” He argues, “If Heather can have two mommies, she should also be able to have two mommies and a daddy.” That weekend on the Today Show, hosts Lester Holt and Campbell Brown gave a sympathetic interview to a polygamous family.

A tacit assumption is that PowerPoint computer presentations are merely a means to an end, a value-neutral tool used for innocent, even noble purposes: enlarging text for the hard of seeing; reducing the demand for printed materials; bringing younger people, who spend much of their lives in front of screens—TV, computer, cell phone, PDA—into worship. But PowerPoint is not value-neutral. As information design analyst Edward Tufte has argued, PowerPoint promotes a kind of cognitive style that routinely disrupts, dominates and trivializes content.

Signs of a full-blown split between the Episcopal Church and most of the worldwide Anglican Communion appeared only days after the U.S....

Approximately 1,600 women in U.S. moderate-to-progressive Baptist groups have been ordained to the ministry, according to a new report released by Baptist Women in Ministry....