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To hear Andy Williams tell it, right now is the most wonderful time of year. It is also the most frantic and maddening time of year. We've commenced our shopping, decorating, and planning for the "best Christmas ever." Or maybe we're completely stressed and wringing our hands because we have no idea how we'll pull it off this year. Church leaders aren't exempt from the frenetic pace by any means, because we've had Advent on our brains for some time already.

Kelly Brown Douglas is an accomplished scholar with a prophetic theological voice that speaks to Christians in the pews and the theological academy....

Two months ago my wife and I walked downtown to see Mr. Holmes, with Sir Ian McKellen playing an aging version of the science-conquers-superstition Sherlock Holmes....

This week’s Gospel proclaims a baptism of repentance and forgiveness of sins. Aren’t we looking to the arrival of Christ with hopeful anticipation, rather than weighing ourselves down with how screwed up we are?

(The Christian Science Monitor) A U.S....

Religious groups pushed back against a wave of opposition toward Syrian refugees and are working to preserve the United States as a haven for them....

(The Christian Science Monitor) At the center of an otherwise idyllic Palestinian village, soot still blackens the entryway of a house...

This week’s Gospel proclaims a baptism of repentance and forgiveness of sins. Aren’t we looking to the arrival of Christ with hopeful anticipation, rather than weighing ourselves down with how screwed up we are?

Can "Abrahamic" replace "Judeo-Christian"? And without sacrificing the integrity of three different traditions?

When you read children’s literature you expect to smile at the quirky characters fumbling to figure out their growing independence. You might expect to cry as you watch characters face the pain of growing up. You don’t expect to be confronted by current events like a refugee crisis—and inspired to imagine the kind of society we could be even in the face of terror and fear.

I always have difficulty blogging and engaging in social media during a tragedy. My feelings run deep, and I can rarely sum them up in 140 characters without feeling trite....

The Old Testament book of Ezra tells of events when Jewish exiles in Babylon were permitted to return to Israel and begin rebuilding Jerusalem....

I recommend Bonnie Jo Campbell’s Mothers, Tell Your Daughters (Norton), a selection of short stories about mostly hardscrabble, down-market women in southwestern lower Michigan....

My Christmas picks take you from the soil to the supper table. The essays in Dirt: A Love Story (ForeEdge Books) celebrate the mystery and meaning of soil....

Going into the Paris climate summit, many nations remain sketchy about their commitments. But several things are new since the Kyoto Protocol.

The beginnings of things are sometimes hard to discern as they are happening. Sometimes we experience that lightning bolt of recognition, a sudden, stark contrast between then and now, seeing in a stranger’s face the one we are beginning to love in that same moment. More often, we realize in the midst of things that they’ve already begun, something new seeping into the familiar terrain, changing the texture like steady gentle rain saturating dry ground. What was hard and dusty becomes damp and spongy, the moment of change imperceptible.

Matt talks to the pastor of Arbor Dale Presbyterian in Banner Elk, North Carolina, about weekly preaching, the preaching persona, and Tee’s unique method of sermon prep.

Novels that rattled and moved me in the last year or so include Anthony Doerr’s terrific World War II novel All the Light We Cannot See (Scribner)....

I’ve been engrossed in The Story of the Lost Child, the fourth in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels (Europa Editions)....

Balancing biography and quantitative research, Robert Putnam paints a sobering picture of the state of the American dream.