Latest Articles
Taking the Bible seriously means reading it figurally
What scripture means is not reducible to what it once meant.
The call of the commandments (Exodus 20:1-17)
From the beginning—“I am the Lord your God”—the Decalogue is about vocation.
Jesus and punishment
Dominique DuBois Gilliard's Rethinking Incarceration is the perfect addition to a larger conversation about mass incarceration.
March 30, Good Friday (John 18:1-19:42)
Who were the people who watched Jesus' crucifixion?
More saints than we can know
On the feast of St. Paul's conversion, Google kept reminding me that it was also Virginia Woolf's birthday.
Libya crisis becomes an opportunity for the Madkhalis
The movement reveres and follows the teachings of an 85-year-old Saudi Arabian cleric.
The binary logic of pro-life vs. pro-choice
Most Americans aren't abortion absolutists. The available political options don't reflect this.
Reading the Bible as a feminist
From creation to Mary Magdalene, Barbara E. Reid offers convincing alternatives to sexist interpretations of scripture.
A stitched-together community
One day Bill didn't show up at the church, so we went to find him.
March 29, Maundy Thursday (John 13:1-17, 31b-35)
When I was a youth pastor, I was familiar with John 13—but the idea of footwashing freaked me out.
Asking better questions about abortion
"Should it be legal?" has not been serving us well.
FaithLeaks launched to root out corruption in religious groups
The web portal's creators hope others will submit documents on church finances, policies and procedures, and sexual abuse case settlements.
A climate scientist talks—respectfully—to climate-change skeptics
“My message is that you don’t have to change who you are to care about this issue.”
Myanmar bulldozes what is left of Rohingya Muslim villages
Mosques and cemeteries were destroyed—and possibly evidence of mass graves.
Guns are Americans’ golden calf
What began as respect for the Second Amendment has morphed into a colossal idolatry of lethal weapons.
The adversary incarnate? (Mark 8:31-38)
We can ignore the Satan stuff, or we can address it.
There once was a Wednesday named Ash
It's Lent, and we all know what that means: time for limericks.
How Michelle Obama subverted respectability politics with a ponytail
If you weren't looking for it, you might have missed her act of resistance at Trump's inauguration.
"Just As I Am," Billy Graham's signature hymn, embodied his style as an evangelist
Graham's altar calls never featured much fire-and-brimstone rhetoric. Neither does Charlotte Elliott's positive, gentle song.
Billy Graham’s legacy for Christians, evangelical and otherwise
As the years passed, Graham’s list of doctrinal dealbreakers got shorter. He kept preaching his simple, nonsectarian call to faith.