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Speak of nightmares! I dreamed that on a below-zero day my garage-door opener failed....

An economic migrant—a desert nomad—leads his family toward a land of promise, believing he is following the will of his Creator. And so begins the great trek for new life, survival, redemption. He will find danger, so much danger that he plans to pass his wife off as his sister. It is a trek repeated today in the heat of the Sonoran desert, in boats from Africa running ashore in southern Europe, in the hulls of boats from Fujian province to the shores of Long Island.

Chang Lee survived two brutal wars in his mother country, Korea. He lived through the dangers posed by Japanese bombs, Chinese howitzers, North Korean minefields and American carbines. But he did not survive an encounter with a mugger in the hallway of his own apartment in the U.S. He was brutally stabbed, and died at the age of 80. Chang Lee’s family were members of the parish I served in Queens.

When my parents bought their home in Marshall, Texas, in 1984, there were 96 mature trees on their one-acre lot, many of them towering pines that rise 75 feet or more from the ground, covering thei...

Here is a novel without glamour and without any obvious appeal for beach or airplane reading....

Of the writing (and publishing) of histories of the Protestant Reformation there is no end: almost a dozen Reformation histories have been published in...

In The Woodsman, Kevin Bacon plays Walter Rossworth, a pedophile who, having served a 12-year prison sentence, tries to settle down to a normal life....

Perhaps it was John Wesley who observed that a preacher has only a few things to say, only a few sermons to preach, and that the task of preaching is a matter of addressing in newly creative and en...

It is hard to speak theologically about the Indian Ocean tsunami without being banal or obscene....

Stories about home: When representatives of the native community met with British Columbia officials to discuss contested land, the natives expressed dismay that the government claimed right...

Torture seems to have become a tool of state for the U.S. Why? If torture is not unplanned, what purpose does it serve?...

Although tsunami recovery supplies destined for nations bordering the Indian Ocean were slowed at first by transportation bottlenecks and chaotic conditions, churchgoers were able to speed generous...

The killer tsunami that devastated islands and shorelines on the Indian Ocean within hours last month ought to alert political leaders to the perils of what some scientists call a much slower but e...

A struggling effort to organize progressive clergy around election-year issues as a political lobbying group in 2004 has undergone a new year’s transformation with a new name, a new tax status and ...

A United Methodist pastor who was defrocked because she is living in a lesbian relationship said she will appeal the verdict, in part to force the church to confront its deep divisions over homose...

As the 109th Congress goes to work this month, legislative battles over religious and moral issues are virtually certain to remain as prominent as they were last year, say two Washington observers ...

Officials of the Church of the Brethren say they will follow through on a request from the Selective Service to have “alternative service” programs in place for conscientious objectors if a militar...

Criminal indictments brought in Jerusalem against four men, including the antiquities collector linked to the James ossuary, or bone box, have prompted museums and devotees of biblical archaeology ...

When the government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army signed a peace accord and power-sharing arrangement on New Year’s Eve at Lake Naivasha, Kenya, South African President Thabo Mbek...

Israel and the Palestinian Authority plan to jointly market their region as a pilgrimage destination, Israel’s Ministry of Tourism has announced....