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At an Alpha training conference in Detroit, a dozen people came forward to testify to the power of the Alpha program. One couple had been close to divorce when they encountered Alpha....

One of Mary Oliver's supreme gifts is her ability to find language for rapture as she responds to nature and our place within it....

God will forgive my sins,” quipped Heinrich Heine on his deathbed. “It’s his job.” How different are the viewpoints of Isaiah, Paul and Luke! They note an ongoing theological tension between the assurance of God’s kindness and the call to immediate repentance. Yes, God is merciful, not punishing as we deserve, not automatically correlating our misdeeds with disasters. But there is no room for complacency: if we think we’re standing, we should watch that we do not fall.

"A man had two sons . . .” was a common way to begin a parable, especially one comparing good and bad sons. Matthew uses it to contrast one son, who promises to work in the vineyard but never shows up, with another, who at first adamantly refuses to go to the vineyard but later repents and goes (21:28-32). Which one did the will of his father, asks Jesus? Not the one who talked a good game, but the one who actually followed through with obedient actions.

What do migrant strawberry pickers, marijuana growers and Internet pornography users have in common?...

There are some of us who read more than we pray. We know we should pray more. We mean to pray more....

Now, when the ecumenical movement seems to be at low tide, there appears a scintillating biography of one of the pr...

News of Raymond Brown’s death on August 8, 1998, swept through the scholarly community like a global blackout....

The places where Americans spend their time and treasure are where their hearts are, notes Lutheran theologian and re...

Though only the second feature by the Australian director Sue Brooks (and the first to open in this country), Japanese Story is an almost perfectly calibrated small work, like a finely shape...

Several years ago I was part of a discussion of theological education which tackled two sets of questions: First, what skills does one need in order to be an effective clergyperson?...

Christians in the U.S. often worry about the nation’s “secularism” and the attendant privatizing of religion. While it’s true that the U.S....

Higher power: Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, was a gifted, largely self-taught man....

In this election year, surveys reveal what many call the “religion gap” facing the Democratic Party. The most frequent churchgoers have been voting Republican in recent presidential contests....

Churchgoers pondering whether to see Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ during Lent know from news stories that they will have to steel themselves for graphically violent scenes and pote...

Turning the heat up on the national debate, Massachusetts’ highest court has ruled that civil unions are not good enough to comply with the court’s historic ruling in November that opened civil mar...

A minister in the Church of the Brethren whose ordination was invalidated because he is openly gay said he will leave the denomination and be ordained in the United Church of Christ....

Many Protestant congregations schedule special music programs and added services before Christmas in hopes of attracting churchgoers and visitors....

The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) started 82 churches last year—the highest number in almost a century—and is well on its way to planting 1,000 new churches by 2020, church officials said....

The spiritual leader of many of the world’s Orthodox Christians dedicated a government-built Greek Orthodox cathedral in Havana, Cuba, last month, and called U.S....