Latest Articles
Two for one? Spousal conpensation: Spousal conpensation
That the spouse of a college or university president almost always acts as a co-professional with the partner (especially when the spouse is a woman) is a situation that has for decades inspired qu...
Altar call: Psalm 51:1-17
Ash Wednesday begins the Lenten journey to Jerusalem. It is best not to journey alone.
Test run (Mark 1:9-15)
In an account in which only Satan, wild animals, and angels are with Jesus, the reader is also present.
If I had $1 billion: Presidents' wish list
What would seminary leaders do if suddenly money were no obstacle—if a generous donor left them, say, $1 billion? ...
What I wish I’d known: Six students on the seminary experience
What have I learned that I wish I knew before I came to seminary?...
Spread too thin
Reading this long book on theological literacy has left me mightily discouraged....
Secrets, by Daniel Ellsberg
The founder of Buddhism, born Prince Gautama Siddharta in India in 563 b.c., began his journey toward becoming a Buddha, an Enlightened One, when he ventured out of his palace and witnessed the suf...
One World, by Peter Singer
Recent events have underlined the need for fresh ethical reflection on international issues. The likelihood that the United States will go to war against Iraq has suddenly and urgently placed U.S....
Family Matters, by Rohinton Mistry
Canadian writer Rohinton Mistry's novel is as straightforward and unpretentious as its title. No pyrotechnics, no metafictional irony, no attempts to draw attention to itself....
The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd
Ten years ago Sue Monk Kidd was a traditionally grounded Christian writer....
Last night out
Spike Lee's desire to explore the nuances of black life is admirable, though the scope of his ambition has often proved to be his artistic undoing....
Your money and your life: Good incarnational theology
No one knows more clearly or more uncomfortably the tensions of life lived between the gospel and economic necessity than a parish clergyperson whose text for the day is “do not worry about your li...
Capital offense: The death-penalty system
George Ryan, until last month the Republican governor of Illinois, has revolutionized the debate over capital punishment....
On not throwing stones: Christian and Muslim conflict in Nigeria
Will Amina Lawal Kurami be stoned to death for having a baby out of wedlock?...
A quilt a day: The widows ofAfghanistan
You don’t have to knock before entering Shkiba’s flat in the southern section of Kabul....
Grace notes: Rediscovering hope and goodness
It brings back goodness for me,” my friend said when, after the midnight service, I sought her out to wish her a blessed Christmas....
Top ten films of ’02: Overlooked treasures
"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” In Steven Daldry’s film The Hours, this opening line from Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs....
Dreaded ‘d-’ words: Vocabulary of aging
In 1974 the University of Chicago Press informed me that it had received a manuscript on the rise of the Celtic church....
Lame excuse: Isaiah 43:18-25; Mark 2:1-12
People in Jesus’ time thought that illness arose from people’s sins in a fairly immediate cause-and-effect relationship. Today we are more apt to think that illness afflicts us in a more random way.