Latest Articles
Feeling a draft: One way to prevent war
Last month Congressman Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.) proposed reinstating the military draft. He sees it as a form of vaccination, a way of inoculating the country against war....
What’s in a name? Mainliners ponder denominational labels: Mainliners ponder denominational labels
After attending a conference at Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral seven years ago, leaders of the Lutheran Church of the Master in Sylmar, California, started thinking about changing their congre...
Ground to a halt: Coffee farmers in peril
When the rains began in Central America in June, Alejandro Fuentes took his nine-year old son, his hair discolored by malnutrition, and walked back and forth across his small farm in the parched so...
Be particular: Interfaith relations
This past May, at an interfaith conference in Skopje, Macedonia, I began a keynote address with a few remarks on what it means to speak in a Christian voice in an interfaith setting....
Fake IDs: Trent Lott's apology
Trent Lott is last year’s news, history, on the ash heap. The senator has been contrite, has repented, asked for forgiveness, done penance and publicly resolved henceforth to lead a godly life....
Name-calling: What we call our churches
I began my ministry as a “new church development” pastor in a small town in northwest Indiana. The new congregation grew out of an older nondenominational church....
No comparison: Isaiah 40:21-31; Psalm 147:1-11
We know things only insofar as we can describe their likeness.
Called to order: Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13
It’s been said that the lessons of history are never clear, and when they are they’re usually wrong.
Repair zone
Repair: The Impulse to Restore in a Fragile World. By Elizabeth V. Speldman. Beacon, 165 pp., $24.00....
The Blindfold's Eyes, by Dianna Ortiz, with Patricia Davis
Sister Dianna Ortiz, an American Ursuline nun and missionary to Guatemala, tells the story of her abduction, rape and torture by security forces and of her subsequent decade of work to docume...
The Reenchantment of Nature, by Alister McGrath
Alister McGrath, professor of historical theology at Oxford, began his professional career in the natural sciences (molecular biophysics)....
Out of the Flames, by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone
Michael Servetus's Restitutio Christianismi is quite a book....
Warsaw horror
Roman Polanski's The Pianist has been hailed as the filmmaker's long-awaited return to the glorious 1960s and '70s, when he made such films as Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby ...
Who cares? The sin of sloth: The sin of sloth
At the Christian Century lecture in September, about 200 people gathered for a festive evening to meet author Kathleen Norris. Her topic that evening was not exactly festive, however....
Make the case: The evidence against Saddam Hussein
The evidence that Saddam Hussein has an aggressive weapons program can be found in the reports made by United Nations arms inspectors and by Iraq itself....
Embracing theology: Miroslav Volf spans conflicting worlds
When I talked to Yale theologian Miroslav Volf last summer, he was being considered as possible dean of Harvard Divinity School....
Luminous mysteries: The ministry and teachings of Christ on Earth
Last fall on a weekend trip to Manhattan, I noticed an unusual addition to the art galleries listed in the Times. The gallery was in the apse of the Cathedral of St....
Grunge: Bad news on the fashion front
Bad news has hit the fashion front. No successors to designers like Calvin Klein, Donna Karan and Ralph Lauren are on the horizon....
Call me: 1 Samuel 3:1-10; John 1:43-51; Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
If you’re Eli, you’re not sleeping that well when the boy comes trotting in to disturb you with his nonsense.