Latest Articles
Wall or picket fence?
Edited by Stephen Monsma and J. Christopher Soper, Equal Treatment of Religion in a Pluralistic Society. (Eerdmans, 211 pp.)...
The managed heart
A few years ago I bought a book called The Managed Heart on the basis of the title alone....
Brutal bigotry
Matthew Shepard was a cautious individual, but not, as it turned out, cautious enough....
Seeing good and evil: The virtues of witness
My faith took a turn for the better ten and a half years ago when something very sad happened. My brother Danny was struck by an automobile and died....
Evangelicals and Israel: Theological roots of a political alliance
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington this past January, his initial meeting was not with President Clinton but with Jerry Falwell and more than 1,000 fundamentalist Chr...
There’s hope for optimism
Optimism is hard to come by this autumn. Don't confuse it with hope, in any case....
Gaining one’s soul: Luke 21:5-19
Late in Jesus' ministry, the disciples stood with him on Jerusalem's holiest ground and stared at the stunningly beautifuly temple, Herod's masterpiece of appeasement of the Jews....
A scientist's search for comprehensive knowledge
By Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. (Knopf, 352 pp.)...
Punishment for sin
A little ideology can be just what the political strategist ordered....
Affirming affirmative action
The aim of affirmative-action programs, which give preference to blacks and other minorities in matters of employment and school admissions, is to bring underrepresented groups into the mainstream ...
Helping theology matter: A challenge for the mainline
Several years ago, in the midst of one of its well-publicized battles about sex, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) proclaimed, "Theology matters." At first glance, this was a slogan to warm the hear...
Congregation of coots
My study, where I read and write and pray, is set on a cliff overlooking a mountain lake. Each morning I sit at my window and watch the lake fill up with light. It is a quiet place and spacious....
Going to the chapel
Nostalgia and paradox seem to have nothing in common. Nostalgia is a single-minded devotion to a romanticized image of the past....
The Gotcha game: Luke 20:27-38
When Jesus took his place in the temple, he became the target in a deadly game of "Gotcha."...
Persecution abroad
What should the U.S. do when Christians are targeted for death in Sudan or persecuted in Pakistan--or when a Buddhist monk is tortured for his faith in Tibet?...
Everything I know about writing I learned in Sunday school
I am a storyteller whose themes are informed by faith, but I do not preach it....
Poetry as testimony
I have long been an evangelist for poetry, a word which seems to engender as much cheer in the average American as the word "Calvinism." I am not easily discouraged, and in most of my speaking enga...
Doing sixty
I was doing 60 and thinking about my boss, who's been on my ass lately, when the doe bounded out of the cedars and onto the highway....
Stories of our lives
I have often been compared to my father. Though I neither look nor sound like him, I seem to have his temperament, some of his intellectual gifts and some of his vices....