Latest Articles
Religious leaders praise Obama orders to ban torture, close Guantánamo: Second day in office
A broad range of religious leaders and human rights advocates have applauded President Obama’s executive order that essentially ends torture of detainees held by the U.S. government....
Starting pastors off on right foot: Lilly Endowment's Transition into Ministry program
Many pastors remember struggling in their first ministerial position—isolated geographically or professionally, lacking ready access to mentors and peers....
Emerging in Seattle: Education at Mars Hill
If you could start a seminary from scratch, how would you do it?...
Emerging in Seattle: Ray Bakke and a school without walls
As a pastor in Chicago and a teacher at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary and McCormick Theological Seminary, Ray Bakke encouraged pastors to engage the city rather than flee from it<...
Binge reader: Read widely and see deeply
“How do you develop such rich metaphors for your speaking and writing?” I asked my colleague, a stylist whose images stick with listeners and readers....
The Philippine diaspora: Everywhere in the world
Travel anywhere in the wealthy world—to North America, Europe or the Middle East—and you will soon find people from the Philippines....
Our planet: Genesis 9:18-17
For the people in Noah’s day, there was no scientific warning of a natural disaster, just a crazy man building an ark.
God is not beyond: Meditations of a modern believer
Are we condemned to be always anxious in our belief? Insofar as our efforts are directed inward, at appeasing or pacifying our own anxieties, the answer is yes. But when we allow our anxieties to become actions, when we perform concrete things in the name of faith, then we gradually begin to find ourselves inching forward on a rope ladder of action strung high over the abyss of unbelief, and our gaze becomes focused on what is ahead of us rather than forever staring paralyzed down.
Uneasy friendship (Mark 8:31-38)
Jesus and Peter care about each other enough to call each other out.
Precarious institutions
Wilbert Webster White, founder of New York Theological Seminary, once wrote that by 1900 he had...
Jonah (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible)
The preface to the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible offers two analogies related to the interpretation of scripture....
Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How It Can Renew America
In the charming but apocalyptic movie WALL•E, Disney-Pixar spins the story...
Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life
In his sonnet “On His Blindness” Milton laments the loss that impedes “that one talent which is death to hide,” now “lodged with me, useless, though...
Sacramental Poetics at the Dawn of Secularism/The Eucharist
These two books have in common only the fa...
After the flood
While I know better than to try too hard to harmonize the lectionary's different texts, today's readings strike me as having an undeniable relationship....
Labeling Christians
Putting labels on people is always a loaded thing, and putting labels on Christians is no exception....