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Many Christians find the book of Ecclesiastes troubling and therefore choose to ignore it....

I never meant to burn any bridges,” Neil Young sings in “One of These Days” in Jonathan Demme’s movie Neil Young: Heart of Gold....

The following materials, all of which appeared before Joseph Ratzinger became Benedict XVI, are essential background for understanding the pope....

I am unapologetically patriotic by temperament and upbringing....

If, as Tertullian taught, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, in a liberal society church growth has to find its inspiration elsewhere....

Jonathan Tasini, a Jew who is running for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate, says that U.S. Jews must speak out about American foreign policy on Israel. He believes "there will only be a just peace agreement when a Palestinian state—a strong, vibrant, prosperous, independent state, able to provide jobs and a good life for its people—thrives alongside Israel.” (rachelswords.org).

Americans are, or at least claim to be, a Christian people. Almost 80 percent of us, including President Bush, practice Christianity in some form....

The worst place on earth to be a child today is northern Uganda. The suffering is far worse than in Darfur in duration, magnitude and long-term consequences....

With two historically black churches now on board, the nation’s largest ecumenical vehicle—Christian Churches Together U.S.A.—is ready to roll....

At the end of April, a new TV ad financed by the Episcopal Church will show 30-something Paige Blair of Maine talking casually about how during tough times, church provides her “some solace and per...

“There is one number in our denomination that keeps going up,” observed Michael Coyner, a United Methodist bishop in Indiana and president of his church’s national Board of Discipleship....

Mincing few words, an umbrella group representing 22,000 Roman Catholic monks, nuns and priests in Canada’s religious orders has challenged the “intransigent” stands of the Vatican on such issues a...

Georgia’s legislature, with both major parties approving, has overwhelmingly passed a bill to fund elective Bible courses in public high schools....

Church leaders in many parts of the world, including General Secretary Samuel Kobia of the World Council of Churches, expressed relief and joy at the freeing of three members of Christian Peacemake...

After a week of intense lobbying by Western governments for his release, Abdul Rahman, an Afghan who faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity, arrived in Italy, where he re...

Patrice L. Rosner, an associate general secretary with the National Council of Churches for six years, has been elected as the new director for the nine-denomination Churches U...

When war causes us to suppress our deepest religious and moral convictions, we cave in to a “higher religion” called war. Yes, there is beauty in patriotism, in its unselfishness and love of country. But this beauty makes for what Reinhold Niebuhr called the “ethical paradox in patriotism”—a tendency to transmute individual unselfishness into national egoism. When this happens, the critical attitude of the individual is squelched, permitting the nation to use “power without moral constraint.”

One night over burgers and some libation, a seminary classmate declared, “Theology and exegesis won’t matter once you’re in the parish....

John Mearsheimer, an expert in international relations at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, academic dean of Harvard University’s John F....

Sixteen toy Model A Fords greet me each day in my study. In the 1927 model, modest headlights are connected by a straight bar. Its symbolic straight face is noncommittal....