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Before Old soldier Lieutenant General William G. Boykin “just fades away,” as General Douglas MacArthur said they all do, let me examine his contributions to theology. Assigned to lead the U.S....

The forceful, athletic and charismatic man who became pope in October 1978 is now an old man, unable to walk and debilitated by Parkinson’s and other diseases....

Billy Graham and I hit New York City at the same time, the summer of 1957. He was 38 and about to clinch his reputation as the premier evangelist in Protestant history....

The realization that one has enemies, personal or professional, can make one adopt a guarded and self-limiting stance toward life. Yet in Psalm 25, where someone is wrestling with this kind of situation, we see the psalmist reaching out to the one he can trust as not treacherous, to whom he can relate, secure in the knowledge that in God he has a source of steadfast love.

I wonder and worry that people perceive Christ’s rule to be similar to the queen of England’s rule. Do we view Christ as one surrounded with the art and beauty of a tradition that is more antique than active? Do we see this figure of salvation as hopelessly outdated and practically mute in these postmodern times?

This volume completes an ambitious two-part study of monotheism in Western culture that began with One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism (Princeton University Press, 2001)....

 In Out of Time, Matt Whitlock (played by Denzel Washington), a police chief in a small Florida town, is sleeping with Ann Merai (Sanaa Lathan), his high school girl friend, now unhap...

The soaring modernist chapel at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, built in 1962, was intended to symbolize America's embrace of religious diversity and interfaith harmony: different spaces...

An exasperated parishioner once wrote me a note explaining that my references to sports in sermons were not effective for her and, in fact, were increasingly irritating....

Many Democrats in Congress and plenty of other Americans find it hard to stomach President Bush’s $87 billion request for military and reconstruction projects in Iraq and Afghanistan....

The unfinished war in Iraq is the war that keeps on killing. Not least, it keeps on killing American troops. The death toll for American soldiers is steadily mounting....

Baseball is the most maturing and deepening of all sports, with the possible exception of fishing. And it demands the most theological discipline....

I have always been fascinated by the phrase “the Lord make his face shine upon you.” God’s blessing, God’s protection, God’s peace, God’s grace—all part of that same benediction—are great goods, an...

Having just written a biography of Martin Luther, coming out in January in the Viking Penguin Lives series, I was curious to see how the movie Luther turned out....

The widow tossed the only shred of independence she had into the offering plate, but she kept intact her complete dependence on God and neighbor. She is our spiritual mentor standing there on the margins of all we hold dear. Her way is a life of faith grounded in the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the communion of the Holy Spirit. It’s a life lived in the conviction that we are stewards of all we have in our hands and our lives, not the owners of these things.

Regardless of what one thought of the legal and moral justification of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, or of the prudence of that action, now that the U.S....

End times call for tall towers of hope. They tingle with expectation.

It’s the toughest job you’ll ev...

The title of Philip Roth's 2000 novel, The Human Stain, suggests something left behind unwillingly, something to regret, even something to be ashamed of....

Eric Till's Luther: Rebel, Liberator, Genius portrays the Reformer in warm and glowing technicolor....