Latest Articles
Acute need: Medical-religious partnerships
Pastor Jeff Sumner was attending a health screening program led by members of his church when he learned that his blood sugar level was unusually high....
Wild fire: Sunday, November 11. Job 19: 23-27a.
“For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall se...
Gasping for air: Sunday, November, 4. Isaiah 1:10-18.
“When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood...
Sexual enslavement
War's Dirty Secret: Rape, Prostitution, and Other Crimes Against Women. Edited by Anne Llewellyn Barstow. Pilgrim, 257 pp., $19.95....
Gandhi’s Passion, by Stanley Wolpert
In a cynical and materialistic age, Gandhi will always be seen as hopelessly out of touch: a holy man who is wholly wrong, a man who lacked understanding of the way things work and the way things h...
A Visit to Vanity Fair, by Alan Jacobs
Because of his uncommonly fine use of language and the gracious character which emerges from his work, Alan Jacobs, who teaches English at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, has always struck me...
The Stranger Next Door, by Arlene Stein
Every liberal ought to read this sociological study of a successful Christian-right, local initiative in a small Oregon town....
Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste, by Frank Burch Brown
Frank Burch Brown is a writer capable of shifting his focus in the space of a few pages from the magnificence of Byzantine worship in tenth-century Constantinople to the Precious Moments Chapel out...
Economic goods: Making moral sense of the market
The Market System: What It Is, How It Works, and What to Make of It. By Charles E. Lindblom. Yale University Press, 304 pp., $26.00....
A habit of ministry
We’ve heard the question, as have pastors around the country: Where is God in the death and devastation that struck September 11?...
Reasons of state: what is government for?
Americans are still trying to grasp what happened on September 11, and we don’t yet know how to talk about what comes next....
Homegrown extremism: preaching in daytona beach
Daytona Beach—it’s the home of NASCAR, Spring Break, Bike Week, and the self-proclaimed “most famous beach in the world.” The city has an interesting mix of natives with dee...
White bull of peace: sudan's forgotten conflict
As part of a campaign to stop one of the world’s longest wars, peace coordinator Telar Deng begins and ends peace conferences by sacrificing a white bull....
Afterlife: reflections following my mother's death
So common are visitations in reports of near-death experiences (NDEs) that I, for one, do not expect to die alone....
Guilt and complexity: The Holocaust's lessons for the church
Controversy about the role of the Vatican and Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust has raged ever since Rolf Hochhuth’s play The Deputy was first performed in 1965, but the debate has ...
To think and act anew
We must not expect our nation’s wound to heal quickly: It is too deep and the pain is too profound. We Americans expect instant healing....
Heavenly minded
Throughout much of history, opium has been used as a narcotic to ease human suffering....
Fortress mentality
Now is the time to warn ourselves of the dangers of impregnability. True, as a country we have been violated in a most brutal way, and we’ll have to make sure that we are safe in the future....
Documenting diversity
A New Religious America. By Diana L. Eck. HarperSanFrancisco, 404 pp., $27.00....