Latest Articles
The last colonizer
Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry. By Michael Prior: Routledge, 291 pp., $75.00....
Licks of Love, by John Updike
Whenever one thinks of John Updike's work, one thinks instinctively of its obsession with sex....
Jayber Crow, by Wendell Berry
The main story in a recent issue of the newspaper that serves my small town was "Nevins Retires After Decades of Parts Service." Nevins sold auto parts for 40 years....
Help My Unbelief, by Fleming Rutledge
Fleming Rutledge's second collection of sermons (her first, The Bible and the New York Times, appeared in 1998) is presented as a thoughtful and sustained response to the plea expressed in...
Making the World Safe for Tourism, by Patricia Goldstone
Tourists mean traveling dollars looking to be spent. And those dollars (pounds, marks, lire) create an expanding market for aircraft, service jobs and entertainment workers, and the prospect ...
Communicating for Life, by Quentin J. Schultze
Media literacy is an issue picking up steam in the church, as I discovered when I found myself attending two conferences on the subject last year....
High-tech quest: Finding God in Silicon Valley
Every now and then, one of Silicon Valley’s high-tech workaholics makes a wrong turn off the freeway and stumbles upon a Californian Brigadoon....
Embryos and us
What respect and protection are owed to the human embryo in its first days of existence? The rise of stem cell research has forced the question....
Managing a merger: Forming the Mennonite Church USA
It was not the sort of place where one would expect to find the folks who produced the More-with-Less cookbook, but the massive and hermetically sealed Opryland complex i...
Can’t we just argue? Hauerwas troubles the waters: hauerwas troubles the waters
Stanley Hauerwas talks about Catholics like Jane Goodall talks about chimpanzees: he spent many years among them as an outsider, came to appreciate their strange practices and rituals, and grew to ...
Not a Band-Aid: Debunking myths about foreign aid
Fanny Makina, a farmer in Malawi, is tilling her plot of land with a hoe and spade. Next she will plant crops of corn, peanuts, squash, beans and cassava, and mark each row carefully with a stick....
Neighbors
The intersection of religion, government and social needs is where this journal has positioned itself throughout its history, so I accepted an invitation from the Aspen Institute to listen in on a ...
Ecumenical chums: UCC and Disciples
It was a shoo-in vote by the coziest of ecumenical partners holding their biennial conventions together for the second time....
Shriveled delight: Sunday, August 26. Isaiah 58:9b-14; Psalm 103:1-8; Hebrews 12:18-29; Luke 13:10-17
As a weekend gardener, I have discovered the deep satisfaction of seeing the fruit of a well-watered garden....
Reaching for the Invisible God, by Philip Yancey
I am not a pastor, but a pilgrim, septic with doubt." With this disclaimer, Philip Yancey embarks on another quest to tell the truth about the Christian life "without overselling it." He succeeds b...
Salvation, by Valerie Martin
Novelist Valerie Martin has written a great narrative about Francesco di Pietro Bernadone-- Francis of Assisi, the elusive figure who casts an enormous shadow across the terrain of Christian spirit...