Latest Articles
Fearless leader
The Cost of Moral Leadership: The Spirituality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.By Geoffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson. Eerdmans, 300 pp., $25.00....
Writing lives
The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage.By Paul Elie. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 555 pp., $27.00....
Fighting words
Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11.By Bruce Lincoln. University of Chicago Press, 142 pp., $25.00....
Saintly violence
Fire from the Midst of You: A Religious Life of John Brown.By Louis A. DeCaro Jr. New York University Press, 348 pp., $32.95....
Seduced by war
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.By Chris Hedges. Public Affairs, 211 pp., $23.00; paperback, $12.95....
Moms in the middle
Appropriately Subversive: Modern Mothers in Traditional Religions.By Tova Hartman Halbertal. Harvard University Press, 193 pp., $29.95....
Black and white
Grace Matters: A True Story of Race, Friendship, and Faith in the Heart of the South.By Chris P. Rice. Jossey-Bass, 303 pp., $22.95....
Still hungry
Growing Up Empty: The Hunger Epidemic in America.By Loretta Schwartz-Noble. HarperCollins, 252 pp., $24.95....
Where have all the folkies gone?
In the hilarious, pitch-perfect Christopher Guest parody, A Mighty Wind, three 1960s folk bands participate in a reunion concert to memorialize the promoter who brought them to the public ...
Gun play: Time to revive a public discussion
As bombs were dropping in Baghdad, the U.S. Supreme Court took up the question of whether it is legitimate to consider racial identity in setting university admission policies....
Minus a miracle: The Middle East impasse
The release of President Bush’s “roadmap” to peace in the Middle East, designed to lead to a Palestinian state by 2005, brings to mind the famous New Yorker cartoon in which a scientist, aft...
Shock and aid: Letter from Baghdad
The air is thick with politics. Reportedly some 60 different political groups have emerged here since the end of the war....
Grief and grievance: The tyranny of the dead
"Before I became enlightened, mountains were mountains and trees were trees.” So begins a well-known Zen Buddhist proverb that continues: “As I approached enlightenment, mountains appeared to be mo...
Aftershock: Soldier in the family
The truck next to me at the stoplight had these words pasted across the back window: “I Have a Son in the Army.” There was no flag decal, no “I’m proud to have” in front of the words, just the fact...
Civic housekeeping: Jean Elshtain on mothering and other duties
Jean Bethke Elshtain began her career by challenging traditional gender roles—the assumption that the public realm is primary and belongs to men, and that the private realm is secondary and belongs...
Guns and crosses: A religion of violence or peace?
Many intellectuals associate religion—and Christianity in particular—with violence. Hence they argue that the less religion we have the better off we will be....
Cosmic colors: High-risk faith
Though liturgical colors for vestments, altars and pulpits are traditional, their color spectrum is not tamper-proof. It is time to take a fresh look at the choices....
Above and beyond: Luke 24:44-53; Acts 1:1-11
Just like that, Jesus is gone. He reappears just long enough to say goodbye. Like a wraith, like a dream, he leaves behind no children, no estate, no writings, no trace of himself except this feeling that his presence was real, that his absence is temporary. Christians have this uncanny feeling that he was just here. He must have just stepped out.
Labors of love (1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17)
Love is the lightest of responsibilities. The difficulty is when we take up the labor before the love.
Design-a-kid: Does humanity need an upgrade?
"People will be inclined to give their children those skills and traits that align with their own temperaments and lifestyles,” writes Gregory Stock, an apostle of human genetic engineering w...