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Bad example
Pundits and politicians used to say they were embarrassed to have to tell their children that Bill Clinton didn’t tell the truth about his escapades....
Breaking and entering: Sunday, March 18 (Luke 13:1-9)
In the little Georgia country church of my childhood, there was a story the older folks loved to tell again and again, laughing over it and savoring it and embellishing it....
A tangled tale of race
One Drop of Blood: The American Misadventure of Race by Scott L. Malcomson...
Seeker Churches, by Kimon Howland Sargeant
Just about everyone by now has heard of seeker churches, and many Americans have visited or joined them....
Revelation, the Religions, and Violence, by Leo D. Lefebure
Why are so many people simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by religion? Why are religions as adept at setting us at each other's throats as they are at linking us with the divine?...
Good manners
I once told a story from the pulpit about road rage that evoked as much response as anything I have ever said....
Diversity training: How community comes about
It’s a painful irony: congregations in mainline churches—which have long made racial reconciliation one of their highest priorities—are no more racially integrated than other chur...
Hues in the pews: Racially mixed churches an elusive goal
When Rodney Woo became pastor of Wilcrest Baptist Church in Houston in 1992, the all-white congregation averaged 200 worshipers....
Media dominance: Who controls the web?
In the early 16th century, Martin Luther, assisted by enterprising printers unhandicapped by copyright laws, swamped the market with five pamphlets for every one put out by his Catholic opponents....
Mission in Mexico: An evangelical surge
The woman sitting next to me on a five-hour bus ride from Puebla to Oaxaca, Mexico, opened her Bible to the “Segunda Epístola de San Pedro Apóstol”—2 Peter....
Mexican Protestants and politics
Mexico’s popular culture is Catholic, but its politics and state are secular....
Rules, rules and more rules
It may seem odd that at the beginning of the 21st century our lives are so pervasively dominated by rules, big rules and small rules, rules that frame our interactions and rules that enter into the...
Sartorial inelegance
Wife Harriet claims to be able to tell whether we are at a meeting of the American Historical Association or the American Academy of Religion by looking at the kinds of tweed jackets men are wearin...
Go fast and live: Hunger as spiritual discipline
Recently some huge billboards along British Columbia’s major roadways showed black-and-white photos of car wrecks—gashed and mangled metal, clouds of steam and smoke—all illumined under the luridne...
The discovery channel: Sunday, March 11Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Luke 13:31-35; Philippians 3:17-4:1
Some grow in their faith by imitating the faithful. Some enhance their faith through study. But today’s lessons suggest that faith involves discovery....
The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood
Canadian writer Margaret Atwood may be most familiar to religious audiences for her 1986 novel The Handmaid's Tale, which satirizes the religious hypocrisy of the right, the political pret...
Faster, by James Gleick
Only a generation ago the settled opinion was that work would soon occupy fewer and fewer of our waking hours....
Flawed leaders
Jesse Jackson is a complicated man. He has been right on most issues most of the time, though certainly not all the time....
Why not human clones? A problematic procedure: A problematic procedure
Last month two fertility specialists, an American and an Italian, announced plans to clone a human being in the next two years....