Latest Articles
Answerizing
A pastor calls the kids to the altar rail for yet another children's sermon and says: "I am thinking of something that is brown, has a bushy tail, and every fall gathers acorns to itself....
Speaking up
William F. Buckley Jr. recently described what riding the lecture circuit meant for him (New Yorker, October 12). "Your agent discloses . . . where exactly the lectures will take place. ....
Gate-crashing God: Psalm 72; Isaiah 11:1-10; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12
Advent is a time to recall that it is not our own unpredictable desire for God that shapes our history, but God's faithfulness. Yes, Advent is a season to make our longing conscious....
Grace at work
By Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1987. (Counterpoint, 216 pp.)...
Healthy alternatives
By Pat and Hugh Armstrong, with Claudia Fegan, M.D., Universal Healthcare: What the United States Can Learn from the Canadian Experience. (New Press, 176 pp.)...
Freely entangled
By John T. Noonan Jr., The Lustre of Our Country: The American Experience of Religious Freedom. (California University Press, 436 pp.)...
Deep wounds
By Chuck Sudetic, Blood and Vengeance: One Family's Story of the War in Bosnia. (Norton, 393 pp.)...
To the contrary
By Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought. (Houghton Mifflin, 254 pp.)...
Master of questions
By Rudiger Safranski, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil. (Harvard University Press, 474 pp.)...
Critical and biblical
By Andre LaCocque and Paul Ricouer.Translated by David Pelauer, Thinking Biblically: Exegetical and Hermeneutical Studies. (University of Chicago Press, 441 pp.)...
Grasping the mystery
By Jan Rohls. Translated by John Hoffmeyer, Reformed Confessions: Theology from Zurich to Barmen. (Westminster John Knox, 328 pp.)...
Slight hope for peace
Yasir Arafat and Benjamin Netanyahu have departed from Maryland's Wye Plantation....
Fortuna’s rule
It seems quixotic these days to oppose gambling. Games of chance have become embedded in our culture, and there are many legal ways to wager one's money....
Lonely crusade: Fighting the gambling industry
In 1992, the county board in Galena, Illinois, voted to allow the Silver Eagle, a riverboat casino, to cast anchor in the nearby Mississippi River....
My friend’s execution
Just after midnight on Wednesday September 24, 1997, I watched as the state of Missouri put Samuel McDonald to death by lethal injection....
When hungers clash
His name I have forgotten, but the image of him eating at our table is indelible....
Terrible angels
American spirituality being what it is these postmodern days, anything can be turned into an icon, an idol, a god or an angel....