Latest Articles
Cultural exchange
Today another package arrived from Ethiopia. I handed the post office clerk the yellow claim slip and he handed me the brown paper package with the exotic stamps on it....
Inverse psychology
The campaigns to discourage teens from smoking are counterproductive, says James Taranto in the American Enterprise (September-October)....
Eavesdropping: Micah 6:1-8; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Matthew 5:1-12; Psalm 15
In her book Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year, Anne Lamott describes the afternoon she misplaced her father. His brain cancer had progressed to the point where he wa...
God and gender
By Rosemary Radford Ruether, Women and Redemption: A Theological History. (Fortress, 366 pp.)...
Studying Congregations, edited by Nancy T. Ammerman, Jackson W. Carroll, Carl S. Dudley and William McKinney
Edited by Nancy T. Ammerman, Jackson W. Carroll, Carl S....
Nihil Obstat, by Sabrina P. Ramet.
By Sabrina P. Ramet, Nihil Obstat: Religion, Politics, and Social Change in East-Central Europe and Russia. (Duke University Press, 340 pp.)...
Eyes on the lies
In Wim Wenders's film Far Away, So Close, two angels look out across Berlin from atop the Brandenburg Gate....
Decision-making
Democratic decision-making is second nature for most American Protestants. Is there a dispute in the church? Let's debate the issue, and then put it to a vote....
The wages of rage: A year of outrage
I must say, reading William Bennett's The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals opened my eyes to two alarming facts....
Conversation on sin: Top religion stories of 1998
Sin, contrition, repentance and forgiveness--such biblical themes were staples of talk shows, editorial pages and everyday conversations in 1998....
Jesus as social visionary
By John Dominic Crossan, The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus. (HarperSanFrancisco, 653 pp.)...
Birthing
No birth was ever celebrated enough. The miracle and mystery of life is too much for us to take in....
Beauty and the beasts
Beauty is back" was a disturbing cover story in, of all places, the Chronicle of Higher Education (December 4)....
Makeshift communities: 1 Corinthians 1:10-18; Matthew 4:12-23
When two or more are gathered, factions lurk.
Congregations at the Crossroads, by Ronald E. Vallet
By Ronald E. Vallet, Congregations at the Crossroads: Remembering to Be Households of God. (Eerdmans, 256 pp.)...
Ministry and the Law, by Mary Angela Shaughnessy, and Stay Out of Court and Stay in Ministry, by Clarance Hagglund and Britton Weimer
By Mary Angela Shaughnessy, S.C.N., J.D., Ministry and the Law. (Paulist, 85 pp.)...
Mary Baker Eddy, by Gillian Gill
While factually rigorous, Gillian Gill's biography of Mary Baker Eddy is engaging and well paced....
Disproportionate punishment
Proportionality is the key theological word for the impeachment process, a word far superior to the solemn evocations of "the law" intoned by the ideologically driven conservatives on the Judiciary...