Latest Articles
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...
Flophouse, by David Isay and Stacy Abramson, photographs by Harvey Wang
When Paul Tillich joined the faculty of New York City's Union Theological Seminary in early 1934, the Bowery of the Lower East Side was in full flower. It was the world's most famous skid row....
The Fragile Absolute, or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For? by Slavoj Zizek
The rumor swept through my circle of friends like wildfire: Bob Dylan had been converted to Christianity (by Larry Norman, no less) and was going to release a religious album!...
Rowling as moralist: Harry Potter and the bullies
When the Harry Potter movie is released this fall, long lines at theaters are sure to provoke yet more speculation about the popularity of J. K....
A time of testing: "If we're going to test, we must invest"
Unlike in Lake Wobegon, not all students in the U.S. are above average—nor are all schools....
The Muslim voice: Rising political engagement
When 25 Muslims walked out of a meeting at the White House last month, the Bush administration had an embarrassing but correctable public relations problem on its hands....