Latest Articles
Language war
The latest battle in the Middle East language war is over how to describe the killing of Palestinian leaders by the Israeli army....
Newsworthy
Readers have sent me some items with which I cannot part and that I would like to share with you. To wit:...
Back to school
School: The Story of American Public Education. Produced by Sarah Mondale and Sarah Patton. Public Broadcasting System. ...
Graced occasions
A Stay Against Confusion: Essays on Faith and Fiction. By Ron Hansen. HarperCollins, 267 pp., $25.00....
Powers, Weakness, and the Tabernacling of God, by Marva J. Dawn
Marva Dawn's book is summed up by its title....
Courting confusion
The word courtship and the idea of it—a prescribed process of getting to know someone in preparation for marriage—is virtually archaic....
Milosevic in the dock: a challenge for the international tribunal
At last the biggest fish in the Balkan pond—former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic—has been snagged by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)....
Spirituality at the crossroads: Schooling in a global setting
In this new millennium, globalization and pluralism are preoccupying themes....
Meaningful voting
At a recent Rose Garden ceremony, former President Jimmy Carter presented President George W. Bush with the final report of the National Commission on Federal Election Reform....
Speaking the truth: Jewish engagements with Christianity
A Christian who leads a Bible study for his teammates as well as pregame prayers with the opposing team, Charlie Ward of the New York Knicks recently raised hackles with his comments about Jews pri...
Prayer time
For most pastors, the question of how the church should relate to the state and to the society and culture around it arises in a very mundane way—in the form of a phone call asking you to del...
Fear of falling: Male clergy in economic crisis
Although ministers like to think of themselves as members of the professional middle class, they are hanging on to that status by their fingernails....
Unaggressive evangelism
A few months ago I gave a lecture at a small Midwestern college....
Rehova Arthur
Four powerful women have been on my mind lately, and I’ll drop three of their names here: the late writer Eudora Welty, into whose cart mine once bumped in a Mississippi supermarket; the late...
Risky business: Sunday, September 2 (Proverbs 25:6-7; Psalm 112; Luke 14:1, 7-14)
In the fragility of goodness, author Martha Nussbaum writes, “The peculiar beauty of human excellence just is its vulnerability.” Goodness is fragile and its vulnerability is part of its b...
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 ...