Latest Articles
Preaching from ground zero
Sermons are like fresh vegetables: best consumed close to the garden. They tend to lose their taste when packaged for the mass market....
In the Aftermath, edited by James Taylor
Stanley Hauerwas does not believe that the people who died on September 11 "deserved" their deaths for the sins of greedy, capitalistic America....
The Making of a Christian Aristocracy, by Michele Renee Salzman
This fascinating and important book attempts to explain why the fourth-century Roman senatorial aristocracy turned "from paganism to Christianity." Michele Renee Salzman, a professor of history at ...
Romancing the text
The complicated novel Possession by A. S. Byatt is a double-tiered romance and a literary brainteaser....
Wasteland, Texas
Thoreau's line about "the mass of men leading lives of quiet desperation" could be applied to Justine Last, the lead character in The Good Girl, a low-budget morality play by writer Mike W...
First pitch: A pastor's Opening Day
When my children were younger, they used to call the first Sunday after Labor Day weekend “Opening Day.” They were referring, not to that long-awaited day in early April when the first major league...
Gone astray: Clerical accountability
When Pope John Paul II spoke at World Youth Day in Toronto a month ago, he touched on the current crisis in the Catholic Church, admonishing his young audience to not be “discouraged by the sins an...
Tied in knots: Vermont churches divided by civil union law
The political furor over Vermont’s two-year-old civil union law has begun to subside, but controversy is still roiling the state’s churches. Some disputes have set pastor against congregation....
The sin of smugness: A time for regret
I never expected First Things to give a theologically nuanced interpretation of the current U.S. war on terrorism, and it hasn’t disappointed me....
Repeat performance: Making preaching come alive
Preachers are like comedians. They are always looking for new material....
New math: Matthew 18:21-35
Matthew's story is terrible news. It is also the truth that will make us free.
Your God is too nice: Matthew 20:1-16
When I was a kid growing up in the Willamette Valley, local teenagers and migrant laborers would go out together into the strawberry fields to help with the harvest. This parable, with its setting in the vineyard, describes the emotions of us workers—we wanted a fair wage for a fair day’s work.
God 101: Back to school with Julian of Norwich
I find the return to school every fall very exciting. I like the start-up rituals. I still have to have new stuff—pens, notebooks, calendars, and of course new shoes....
Twice-told tales
Imagine this: A group of American Protestants uses its numerical superiority and cultural currency to fight what it sees as increasing liberalism and secularization in elite society....
Knowing the Triune God, edited by James J. Buckley
Although she did not intend it to be, Sallie McFague's 1987 book Models of God could be read as a work of trinitarian theology....