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The story of the lone, crazed gunman is a familiar one in America, but that is not the story of Benjamin Smith, who went on a drive-by shooting spree in Illinois and Indiana over the July 4 weekend...

On the way to my office in Sarajevo I pass four European embassies, where every day for the past three months up to 100 people have gathered, pressing against the gates in the hopes of getting a vi...

What is the most important spiritual gift that we can pass on to our children?...

In the current culture wars, religious liberals tend to ally themselves with the educational establishment against those on the Religious Right who are attacking the public schools....

If you want to understand why Americans are largely indifferent to the plight of the Palestinians, consider the focus of two recent news stories....

I find it hard to believe that the Jesus of Matthew's Gospel could have fed the 5,000 in the wilderness without recalling his own temptation....

During my first year of teaching, I learned the hazards of asking college seniors their postgraduation plans....

Question: who are Crombie Taylor, Lyndon Lyon, Paul Sacher, John Tigrett, Waldo Semon, Ed Peterson and James Blades? Do you recognize any of their names? Let's look around us....

The U.S. Supreme Court's opinions about the relationship between religion and the state have been increasingly separationist, argues Phillip Hammond, a distinguished sociologist of religion and contributor to the so-called civil religion discussion. Although the nation "began as a de facto Protestant society," it has since the close of the Civil War moved toward greater and greater government neutrality not only toward differing religions but also toward the difference between religion and irreligion. This is as it should be, Hammond thinks. Behind the Constitution, he contends, is a "constitutional faith," and separationism, rightly understood, is its legal or judicial expression.

The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God.By Dallas Willard, HaperSanFrancisco, 428 pp. ...

One of the best things about William Willimon's new book is that he introduces us to serious, spiritually significant works of fiction and makes us want to read them. One of the worst is that we might be tempted to take Willimon's book as a shortcut, using his summaries of great novels as a substitute for reading them.

Millions of unwanted children around the world languish either in foster homes or "foster warehouses"—bleak government-run institutions where they are ignored by an indifferent staff....

Mainliners are not the only ones worrying about an eroding theological identity....

The Joneses are surrendering!" a TV news reporter proclaims....

Jubilee 2000 is gaining momentum. Centers for the movement have arisen in more than 40 countries, and numerous churches and nongovernmental organizations have signed on to the campaign....

Anyone who's ever grown peas, at least in my neck of the woods, can appreciate the parable of the wheat and the weeds....

The war over Kosovo has ended. While it was still raging, it was justified primarily in terms of the need to protect ethnic Albanians from egregious human rights abuses by the Milosevic regime....

The Ten Commandments may soon, by decree, be posted on public school walls. Burnt into wood or graven as images in stone, or merely inked, they will contribute to American moral security....

Jubilee 2000 is gaining momentum. Centers for the movement have arisen in more than 40 countries, and numerous churches and nongovernmental organizations have signed on to the campaign....

Everyone seems to agree that America's moral fabric is being undermined by the unwise proliferation of consumer credit. We readily believe those who claim that easy credit fuels rampant hedonism and leads many to bankruptcy. Wistfully, we compare ourselves to ancestors who supposedly controlled their spending and never went into debt. We believe that our present affluence is a bubble that will surely burst.