Latest Articles
Where are the younger clergy? Affirming vocations: Affirming vocations
The number of ordained clergy age 35 or under in mainline denominations is remarkably low....
Media bias
In Why Religion Matters, Huston Smith argues for the importance of having and articulating a worldview....
Mining the news
To sustain a weekly column over a 40-year period requires paying attention—and getting more than a little help from others....
Call waiting: Inviting youth to ministry
Mainline denominations have only begun to recognize the alarmingly low numbers of clergy under the age of 35....
Saving Saul: Sunday, April 29 (Acts 9:1-20)
Before my children were able to read they knew several stories by heart. The stories were picture book favorites that we read to them again and again....
Nonviolence in Palestine
A terrified boy huddles in his father’s arms moments before an Israeli bullet kills him; a baby girl sits smiling in a stroller moments before a Palestinian bullet extinguishes her life....
Fanning the flames: Sunday, April 22 Acts 5:17-42
Alice Thompson lived with her parents in rural southern Illinois. Besides a house and a tool shed, the other building on their small acreage was a chicken coop where the egg-laying hens roosted....
Call waiting: Inviting youth to ministry
Mainline denominations have only begun to recognize the alarmingly low numbers of clergy under the age of 35....
Replacing the work ethic
The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age by Pekka Himanen...
The Holocaust and the Christian World, edited by Carol Rittner, Stephen D. Smith and Irena Steinfeldt.
For general readers this is the best available book on the Christian response to the Holocaust. It is ideal for use in churches, seminaries, colleges and universities....
Words Alone: The Poet T. S. Eliot, by Denis Donoghue
Denis Donoghue describes his book as "partly a memoir, partly a study of Eliot's poetry." When the two parts come together his book moves with uncommon gracefulness....
Campaign alternative: The "clean money" reform
As the congressional debate on campaign finances was being launched, Representative Thomas Davis (R., Va.) was already speculating on how a ban on so-called soft money, if enacted, could be circumv...
Not ready for Larry King Live: An interview with Robert Wuthnow
"It seems to me the mainline churches are set up institutionally not to
generate celebrity-status people, whereas evangelical churches, which
are likely to be independent and have an entrepreneurial minister,
almost breed celebrity status."
Russian renewal: The complex face of Orthodoxy
When he became president of Russia last year, Vladimir Putin disclosed that “when I was serving in the KGB in Germany, I always wore a cross under my shirt.” Whether or not one believes...
Will my son be a Christian?
The statistics are clearly in my favor. An overwhelming majority of children adopt the religion of their parents. So I shouldn’t worry....
Mainline ‘quietly effective’ The churches' political work behind the scenes: political work behind the scenes
Last fall, mainline denomination lobbyists scored big in the game of Washington politics when Congress passed legislation to provide $435 million in debt relief for developing countries—part ...
Survival handbook
The second best-selling book on campuses these days is Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht’s straight-faced but not unhumorous The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook (Chron...
Empty tomb, empty talk: Easter Sunday, April 15 Luke 24:1-12
On a Sunday morning in a certain city church, the Gospel lesson had been read and the minister was about to begin the sermon....
Last things
The End of the World and the Ends of God: Science and Theology on Eschatology, edited by John Polkinghorne and Michael Welker...
Nature Reborn, by H. Paul Santmire
In this fine book H. Paul Santmire explores the insights of a wide range of classical and contemporary Christian theologians and ethicists....