Latest Articles
Neighborhood megachurch: Shepherd of the Hills in Southern California
After reading the research on booming Protestant megachurches and their senior pastors, I couldn’t help noting how my neighborhood megachurch and its lead pastor (an acquaintance for more tha...
Cloud and fire: Discernment and the will of God
Martha Tidwell sat before me wearing a blue pants suit and a weary face....
Hosea's conviction: Hosea 11:1-11
“Brothers and sisters, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Let us therefore join our hearts together in prayer. . . .”...
Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy in Light of the Unpublished Seminars of 1933-1935
Over the past 25 years postmodernism has become a major if not dominant fo...
The House of Secrets: The Hidden World of the Mikveh
Most Christians have little understanding of the practice in which baptism has its origins: ritual bathing for purification i...
Apocalypse and Allegiance: Worship, Politics, and Devotion in the Book of Revelation
After taking my course on Revelation a few years ago, a young pastor from Africa claimed that the course was life-changing. Why?...
Jamesian analysis
When I read a biography, I usually find myself poking, like a nosy houseguest, into shadowy corners that the author, for whatever reason, left unlit....
Sundowning
Psalm 107 is a psalm of lament, a song sung by a disoriented soul watching the light drain out of the world and the shadows of death and pain pour in.
The songs I hate to love
A post last week by Century contributing editor Jason Byassee raised a...
Tough calls
This summer, my divinity-student wife is doing a unit of clinical pastoral education....
Let us say what we believe
David Heim’s recent post
reminded me of how the creed is introduced in worship in the last two...
Worship: It is and it isn't about you
I’m not much of a Rick Warren fan, but I’ve always appreciated his best-known catchphrase: "...
Our weak prayer lives
I talk a lot about prayer in my life, and you may talk a good deal about
prayer in yours. But let’s be honest: we’re pretty lousy at praying, at...
An ad that targets bigots
The National Republican Trust PAC has a new TV spot about the Cordoba House controversy,...
Making Sense of Evolution
Here’s something creationists and evolutionary naturalists agree about:
Darwin’s theory of evolution leads inevitably to atheism. John F....
Incoming
A writer in the Century some years ago recalled in passing the
era when mail was delivered twice a day. He noted, somewhat...
Tea Party's strange brew: Unmitigated disasters
Major crises in recent years have been fostered by an unregulated private sector. Wall Street’s recklessness unraveled the economy and put millions out of work....