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For anyone with an ounce of idealism, or any fond memories of singing "Pass It On," Pay It Forward offers some morally powerful moments, at least at the beginning. It...

You Can Count on Me (2000), directed by Kenneth LonerganThe Wind Will Cary Us (1999), directed by Abbas Kiarostami...

I love Thanksgiving. It’s the one holiday the retail economy has not been able to capture....

"There is no There there,” said Gertrude Stein about Oakland, California. “There is a different there there,” say I, an Oaklandite by birth, about virtuality....

Attorney General Janet Reno traveled to Cleveland four years ago to observe ex-offenders at work in an innovative reentry program....

Here we are in the midst of December—surrounded by Santa, elves and frenzied children....

Like Many people with nothing better to do, I often read obituaries....

The other night, while doing my bathtub reading of scholarly journals, I came across two references to one subject. Taken together they almost roused me from the torpor induced by the whirlpool....

We live between Christ’s first and second advent, in what W. H....

What is the most popular Christmas song? One way to determine that is to consult the Muzak Holiday Channel and find the song that has the most versions available....

"Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near" (Luke 21:28)....

Between two advents

Secret Dialogues: Church-State Relations, Torture, and Social Justice in Authoritarian Brazil, by Kenneth P. Serbin...

A generation ago, Leander Keck, past dean of Yale Divinity School and Winkley Professor of Biblical Theology, emeritus, at Yale, wrote A Future for the Historical Jesus (1971), a book that...

Outside the Four Gospels, the New Testament yields precious little about Jesus," writes John P....

One of the clichés of historians and civics textbooks is that the U.S. is an “experiment” in democracy....

According to the consensus among American commentators, reflecting the views of the administration and Congress, a peace process that was on the verge of a breakthrough a few months ago has broken ...

In his book Abel’s Island William Steig tells the story of a mouse (Abel) who is marooned on an island for an entire year. In the first part of the book, Abel is all alone on the island....

Five-year-old Andy is in the shower looking for ways to use an entire bottle of blue, no-tears Aussie shampoo (the kind with the kangaroo on the bottle) without washing his hair....

In an essay in the New York Times, written prior to the presidential election and its tension-filled aftermath, author Alan Ehrenhalt argues that the dominant fact of our political life du...