Latest Articles

President Bush calls Israel’s wall of separation from the Palestinians a “problem” for the road map to peace in the Middle East....

Something “anomalous” is “inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected.” I just learned that this definition fits the University of Chicago faculty, with whom I worked for...

When I was in first grade, teachers assigned students to reading groups based on how well they could read. They would name all the groups after birds so that everyone would feel equal, but you could always tell how well you were doing by what bird your group was named after. There were the Eagles, the Robins and the Pigeons. The Pigeons were not reading War and Peace .

Jesus is not accusing the Pharisees of an early form of Pelagianism.

For Albert Borgmann, philosophy is a way of taking up the questions that reside at the center of everyday life—questions that are urgent but often inarticulate....

This first novel is getting a lot of attention because its author, New Republic book critic James Wood, is known for his merciless criticism of well-known novelists....

People remember where they were on September 11. It's a date so emblazoned on our memories that we don't need to mark it by year....

Rarely, if ever, have I been so closely drawn to a book as I was to Nora Gallagher's Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith....

Jesus proved that preaching costly discipleship could be hazardous to one's health. Peter Storey gives readers a firsthand encounter with such preaching....

For the first half-hour you can't imagine how Seabiscuit is ever going to get out from under the truly awful ideas that writer-director Gary Ross has inflicted on it....

One of the ways to divide the human race, I have concluded, is between those who can tell a good joke and those who cannot. Some people are joke-telling experts....

It’s easy to define a lie: it is a statement the speaker knows is not true. Being truthful is more complex. As Bonhoeffer argued, character matters....

The most dominant form of pastoral contact in my congregation is e-mail. I love it. And I hate it. I love it more than hate it, but the contest is not over. In fact, it has just begun....

Dear Derek: It’s awfully quiet around the house now that you’re gone. In fact, hardly a day goes by that Mom and I don’t remark on it....

Living in Alabama, I encounter a lot of intuitive spelling. I am no spelling snob....

On a summer evening in our town, Carnival came to Main Street....

Christian Tetzlaff, superstar young violinist, charmed our town last month by playing Bach’s six works for solo violin....

Jesus called the Twelve together and put the question to them with unsettling directness: Do you also wish to go away? I wonder sometimes how I would have responded to the question. Because at times the truth is I do wish to go away.

Thou shalt not be ridiculous. Paul says, "See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil." When Paul wrote that wonderful sentence he probably was sitting in an upper room in Athens. It was late at night, quiet, and all the fools were asleep.

In the biblical story, God tests his faithful servant Job to see whether Job will stay devoted to God even if God takes everything away from him....