Latest Articles
Help, St.Anthony: Another shipwreck averted
As I write, it is morning on the feast of St. Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of poor people and shipwreck victims and the finder of lost objects. It is June, the month of the Sacred Heart....
Quotidian acts: What local churches are doing
Forty years ago, when my kind and I were still young enough to be licensed to write crabby books (they got reviewed as “prophetic”) about American religion, the focus often fell on the public face ...
Up for adoption: Romans 8:12-25
One is not born a Christian; one becomes a Christian. This reminds me of my three-year-old friend Grace.
The joke is on us: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
"Have you understood all this?" They said yes. God must still be laughing.
Who lives? Who dies? The utility of Peter Singer: The utility of Peter Singer
You could make the case that Peter Singer has done more good than anyone else alive....
The organ business
Are we morally obligated to extend every life that we have the technological or medical ability to extend?...
Toppling the wall
Most Americans assume that the separation of church and state is a fundamental principle deeply rooted in American constitutionalism; that the Firs...
Squelching moral debate
This is a very good book, but not because it brings good news. John H....
The Good Men, by Charmaine Craig
Set in 14th-century France during the time of the Inquisition against the heretics known as the Cathari, this is a story about love and obsession....
As I Lay Dying, by Richard John Neuhaus
William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (1930), a chronicle of the Bundren family's odd journey to bury wife and mother Addie, is notable for its innovative use of narrative chronology, stream o...
Split personality
As played by the remarkable actor Ryan Gosling, Danny Balint is one of the most unconventional and compelling characters on the screen this year....
Sister secrets
My aunt, who died earlier this year, was a woman of great strength and a raucous sense of humor....
Elie Wiesel and the Politics of Moral Leadership, by Mark Chmiel
The 1960 publication of Elie Wiesel's memoir, Night, marked a major turning point in the American consciousness of what we now call the Holocaust....
True patriotism: Healthy skeptism
Many Americans have become born-again believers in patriotism since September 11, some to their own surprise....
Catholics find a voice: A call for democratic reform
Six months ago Voice of the Faithful didn’t exist. Now it is one of the most turbo-charged Christian movements in the country....
Field of corporate dreams: Farming without the farmer
In 1977 Wendell Berry warned that the rise of corporate farming and the disappearance of the family farm were destroying local communities and economies....
Hog heaven: Preaching to swine farmers
As we hurtled toward Shakespeare, Ontario, I felt a familiar cold visceral tightness and fear. “Shakespeare,” I brooded. “I hope the name isn’t an omen. ‘Shakespeare’ suggests tragedy....
Still untouchable: The politics of religious conversion
In their long struggle for equality, India’s dalits, or “untouchables,” have often exchanged their Hinduism for Islam, Christianity, Sikhism or Buddhism, believing that they will better their lives...
A contested classic: Critics ask: Whose Christ? Which culture?
A book that one can barely escape reading on the way to earning a seminary degree is Christ and Culture, by H. Richard Niebuhr. Published in 1951, the book quickly became a classic....
Imagining scripture: A rich reservoir of ancient and contemporary conversation partners
It seems to me a wonderful irony that Christians in America are preoccupied with debates about biblical authority just when all parties to the debates are less knowledgeable about the content of sc...