Latest Articles
Done conferencing: Democracy’s downside
Among the means of grace John Wesley lists “Christian conferencing.” Summer is always a popular time for Christians to congregate at denominational meetings, and this summer has been particularly s...
Questioning birthright Israel: Issues of Jewish identity
This summer thousands of high school and college-age Jewish youth have been descending on Israel....
The expansion of Christianity: An interview with Andrew Walls: Gospel, culture and the missionary movement
A former missionary to Sierra Leone and Nigeria, Andrew Walls taught for many years at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland....
Building communities from the inside out: Mobilizing for a "good enough" city
According to articles in the New Yorker and Business Week, churches are leading an urban renaissance....
The sacred well
When I bought the land where I now live, there was nothing on it but trees, cows and fescue. The first question the builder asked me was, “Where’s your well?” I tried to hide my surprise....
Classified knowledge
Question: Who had reason to vandalize the statue of Carl von Linné, a.k.a....
Dealing with rebels: Episcopal resistance to women’s ordination
In the waning days of the Episcopal Church’s July 5-15 General Convention in Denver, a weary sense of déjà vu descended on the bishops and the lay and clergy deputies who make up the church’s highe...
Decisions (Joshua 24:1-2, 14-18; John 6:56-69)
Woody Allen once remarked that humanity is at a crossroads: “One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction....
Wisdom famine (Proverbs 9:1-6; Ephesians 5:15-20)
Proverbs 9 seems to suggest that someone might be tempted to bypass wisdom’s feast and try to survive on the thin gruel of folly, or information.
The sacred well
When I bought the land where I now live, there was nothing on it but trees, cows and fescue. The first question the builder asked me was, “Where’s your well?” I tried to hide my surprise....
The birth of religious studies
The University Gets Religion: Religious Studies in American Higher Education, by D.G. Hart...
The Market Economy and Christian Ethics, by Peter H. Sedgwick
Peter Sedgwick has provided a fine service in reviewing a vast number of sources related to economic life today, though the title of his book should have been Consumption, Work and Human Identi...
Salvation at Stake, by Brad S. Gregory
Martyrdom appears so utterly alien to our time because postmodern theorists have reduced the truth claims of Western Christianity to private opinion, making any reference to ultimate truth unbeliev...
Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity During the Holocaust, by Victoria J. Barnett
On a wall of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., is a quotation from Israeli historian Yahuda Bauer: "Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator....
Paul: A Novel, by Walter Wangerin Jr.
The uneasy genre of biblical fiction often includes what Flannery O’Connor called the “shoddy religious novel,” filled with shallow characters and plot structures as clichéd and melodramatic as 195...
A simple solution
When a friend of mine was invited to a retirement party, he responded, “Sorry, can’t make it. I am going to be climbing a mountain in Kenya....
Mexico's political earthquake: A stunning defeat for the PRI
It’s like the Berlin Wall falling down,” said one Mexican official about his country’s July 2 election. “But the PRI lasted longer than the wall.” A lot longer....
Decorum in Denver: At the Episcopal convention
By some gracious irony, the death of Robert Runcie came while the U.S. Episcopal Church’s General Convention was in session....
Sacred and shared: The future of the Columbia River
What do a Catholic bishop, a Nez Perce tribal elder, a wildlife biologist, a flyfishing surgeon and a commercial fisherman have in common?...