Latest Articles
Literary agent: A profile of Phyllis Tickle
In 1987 Phyllis Tickle, then the religion editor at Publisher’s Weekly, foresaw a rising demand for religious books....
Long goodbye: John 17:20-26; Acts 16:16-34
How do you say goodbye? It depends, I suppose, on the relationship—what it has grown to and what it will become. For Jesus, preparing to leave the close society of his disciples seems to have been a long process. Almost from the beginning he gently, or sometimes in exasperation, explained that the course his life was following would lead to profound changes in their lives. So he began saying goodbye early.
Good company: Genesis 11:1-9; John 14:8-17
George MacLeod, founder of the Iona Community, said that in order to form community, people must be engaged in a “demanding common task.” In his case the task was to rebuild the accommodation areas of Iona Abbey. The group that he led included people with considerable formal education, as well as people with little education. These men and women formed community out of purpose and in difficult conditions; they shared what they had and learned from each other. They built with stone and with their lives, even though they could not know what the results of their work would be.
Take and read
Christian ethics, like other theological disciplines, constantly rethinks its history in light of cu...
Take and read
Eire, a Reformation historian, writes of his early childhood in Cuba and his wrenching exile from his family and country at...
Take and read
This is a collection of Barton’s shrewd, discerning essays on such matters as “natural law” and prophetic ethics....
Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law
Janet Jackson’s recent display of her bare breast at Super Bowl halftime, the trials of Michael Jackson and Martha Stewart, and ...
The Way Things Are: Conversations with Huston Smith on the Spiritual Life
It’s amazing and comforting to realize that world religions scholar Huston Smith, 84, has been toiling in the fields of the Lord for more than 40 years, teaching more than one generation of student...
From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries
Peter Lampe, professor of New Testament at Heidelberg, begins his magisterial book by giving us a definite ...
Rev. Parker's last stand: Fifty years of preaching
Carl Parker died recently. The Reverend Carl Parker....
Democratic virtues: Straddling the worlds of religion and politics
This magazine has long straddled the world of religion and politics, convinced that political awareness and engagement are part of faithful Christian living....
Intelligence choices: What price security?
The commission investigating the 9/11 attacks has heard plenty of complaints about the failure of U.S. counterterrorism. Officials have described agencies as underfunded and understaffed....
Century Marks
Plague on their house: People tend to think of strangers as the spreaders of contagion....
Storm clouds gathering: Lutherans face sexuality issues
This was to be a relatively calm year for Mark S. Hanson, the presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America....
Gender choice: Is it playing God? Designer children
Don’t get Lizette Frielingsdorf wrong. She loved her three boys—Jordan, Justin and Jake....
Data bite: Capital punishment
The United States ranks third, behind only China and Iran, in reported executions, according to Amnesty International’s annual report on the death penalty....
Bush, Kerry virtually tied for Catholic vote: Kerry leads among Hispanics
President Bush and his presumed Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry, are in a virtual dead heat among American Catholic voters, according to a poll released in mid-April by Georgetown Univers...