Latest Articles
Acquainted with death
It was my last day at St. Benedict's Monastery in Minnesota, where I had been leading a retreat on Julian of Norwich. Since St....
Attracting attention
Tina Brown, celebrity editor of Talk, previously of the New Yorker, was welcoming writer Alexander Chancellor at a dinner party in New York....
Party time: Matthew 22:1-14
Tables spread with mouth-watering morsels, guests gathered in the perfect ambiance, lots of noise, laughter and fun. We know a party when we see one....
Who are the Adventists?
Seventh-day Adventism in Crisis: Gender and Sectarian Change in an Emerging Religion, by Laura L. Vance...
The Ambitious Generation, by Barbara Schneider and David Stevenson
Adolescence has a relatively brief history. It did not emerge as an identifiable life stage until the early 20th century....
The Practice of Reading, by Denis Donoghue
Denis Donoghue wants us to get back to reading literature as literature....
The Secular Mind, by Robert Coles
This meditation on faith's fragility could not come at a better time....
False Hopes, by Daniel Callahan
Medicine, Daniel Callahan argues, has become the sustainer of false hope in the face of death and dissolution....
True compassion
It is hard not to conclude, given his recent stumbling about on the issue, that at some point prior to his 30th birthday Governor George W. Bush used cocaine....
Scouts' honor: A public-private confusion
The Boy Scouts of America want to exclude gays, atheists and agnostics. They think they have the right to do so because they are, they claim, a private, voluntary organization....
A catholic vision: At the ELCA assembly
"It's not the whole show," cried Presiding Bishop H. George Anderson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America prior to the denomination's Churchwide Assembly in Denver....
Imagining a new church: Disciples, not members
As the organizing pastor of a suburban congregation, I have experienced firsthand its faltering first steps, its seasons of growth and drought, and the Spirit's persistent attempts to help us ident...
Countering hatred: Neglect is not benign
In a nine-state area of the Midwest, 272 far-right-wing organizations—including Christian Identity, Christian Patriot, neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan groups—ply their racist and anti-Semitic ideologies....
The faith of the scholars: Theology and religious studies
The Politics of Religious Studies, by Donald Wiebe...
Why are they singing?
Our hosts in Estonia were somberly describing the challenges they faced in maintaining a Christian presence throughout the Soviet era....
Not-so-new age
Chesterton said that when people stop believing in God they do not believe in nothing, they believe in everything. That dictum is well illustrated in postsecular America....
The obedient son: Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:23-32
Radical obedience means going to the cross.
Telling details: No safe parts in scripture
"Avoid abstraction," I was told as I prepared to speak to a group of junior high school students....
Intimate partners
Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth: A Study in Biography and the History of Theology, by Suzanne Selinger...
Growing Up Religious, by Robert Wuthnow
American religious life is in ferment, not decline....