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I’m not sure why the pastorate produces so much anxiety. I suppose you have the performative aspects of it....

Shortly before David Steinmetz died last November, I saw him at a wedding that I was officiating....

Siavosh Derakhti, 25, a Swedish Muslim honored in Europe and the United States for his campaign to counter anti-Semitism, explains his motivation by invoking David....

Our two ministers associations merged. Our differences don't stop us from working together.

Overall, though, it was a moving book that certainly had me reflecting on the fragility of my own journey, and the many ways it could have continued down a very different path that where I find myself today. Hopefully such a book would open us up to our shared humanity and make us less likely to use one dimensional categories like “thugs,” and “those people” to define other people. We would all be more compassionate if we identified more deeply with those whose journeys have taken hard and painful turns.

“Choose life,” the prophet says. Choose life over the deadly ways of lesser gods. Choose life over all that shines, sparkles, and glitters. Choose life over what you possess and over what possesses you. It sounds so easy and desirable. Sure, until Jesus comes along and names the cost right out loud. If we truly choose life, we have to let go of everything. Years ago I had a therapist who told me that the choice to live or die was mine.

Protestants were deeply involved in the gay rights movement—even before the Stonewall Riots.

Concealed weapons don't make us safer; communities do.

At Cana, Jesus asks Mary, "What is this to me and to you?" It is very important that the church hear this question.

A summer of racial unrest throughout the country has led to calls in the presidential campaign to “restore law and order.” It’s the same line used by Richard Nixon in 1968 to appeal to white nationalist fears of black criminality after the “long hot summer of 1967.” Racialized wars on drugs emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—directed against Chinese people for opium use, African Americans in the South for charges of cocaine use, and Mexicans and Mexican Americans surrounding allegations of marijuana use.  Then there is peyote, a sacred medicine and religious adjunct in Native American worship.

Earlier this month, I drove out to the mountains to pick up my son from a 12-day wilderness/adventure/ education camp. As the sun set over a gorgeous summer evening in the Rockies, we were treated to a closing program that gave us a glimpse into what the 12 days had looked like.

Mark Stenberg takes aim at Christian certainty. I'm not certain that's our problem.

Religious liberty claims have often been used by conservatives to defend Christians-only clubs on campus and merchants who won’t serve LGBTQ people....

Some residents of the Bethany memory care unit can’t remember their loved ones’ names, much less the unit chaplain’s. But when Kenneth Carder preaches, they lean in....

What is Jesus thinking when he tells the parable of the dishonest steward?

Public-health approaches to addiction share a compelling goal: to avoid making things worse.

Jeffrey MacDonald reports on an interesting development: left-of-center religious groups invoking religious liberty much as right-of-center groups have in recent years. A church wants to install solar panels despite the objections of a local historic district commission; elsewhere, groups serving the homeless are looking to faith-based partners to protect their ability to do so. The story provides a lens on the classic questions about what counts as religious exercise and who decides. Yet it’s a little odd that MacDonald’s framing takes as given this very recent use of the term “religious liberty”—more strategy than principle, an argument to advance a cause.

The morning was hot, the thick wet suffusing heat of a late southern summer, and I was walking.

It's not new for politicians to talk a lot about American jobs. But their nationalistic fervor is troubling.

I hear a fearful refrain coming from church leaders, from every denominational level. They twist their fingers into knots as they say: If we don’t have our endowment, we will die. It’s our job to protect the endowment for future generations. Our future depends on a healthy endowment.