Latest Articles
Trust betrayed: A crisis in congregational life
It was Wednesday. Time to visit my youth intern again. I really, really disliked Wednesday mornings....
Sacrificial worship: Romans 12:9-21
Like an artist sketching in broad strokes on a huge canvas, Paul in the first 11 chapters of Romans has traced with great intensity God’s patience and persistence at making peace with humanity....
Three faiths, three friends: Seattle's interfaith amigos
Tables were set for the third annual interfaith Passover Seder meal, a "bring your own wine" event at University Congregational Church in Seattle. There were place settings for 300, fresh flowers, two kinds of charoset (a blend of fruit and nuts), two kinds of horseradish and baskets of matzo. The participants at this event came not only from University Congregational, led by pastor Don McKenzie, but also from Bet Alef, a “meditative synagogue” led by Rabbi Ted Falcon, and from an experimental congregation known as the Interfaith Community Church, led by Sufi Muslim teacher Jamal Rahman.
Language lessons: Learning with Muslims
During the 1990-1991 Gulf War, George Dardess, an English teacher in Rochester, New York, watched on television as the U.S. dropped “smart bombs” on Baghdad....
Great debates
During the third debate of the 2000 presidential election, then–vice president Al Gore stepped away from his podium and wand...
Dust and ashes
The book of Job is one of the most beautiful and perplexing books of the Bible. G. K....
Obama's bind
Black public figures seem to fall into one of two categories: they either project a militant resistance to white ...
God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215
A fresh telling of the earliest encounters between the Islamic world and Christian Europe hardly needs justification....
The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post–Religious Right America
In the early 1990s, I passed an evening in the home of a young couple in Northern Ireland...
Imitating Jesus: An Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics
In the late 1970s, Dieter Georgi would begin his New Testament ethics class by speaking of hunger....
Anger: Developing Your Spiritual Ally/Holy Anger: Jacob, Job, Jesus
In Anger: Your Spiritual Ally, Andrew Lester, emeritus professor of pastoral theol...
Hellboy II: The GoldenArmy
The makers of Hellboy II: The Golden Army must have had the time of their lives....
In the I AM
When I read Romans 12:9-21, I think: this is the best of it, this is what marks and makes a good Christian. Love truly and even more generously than the next guy....
Who you are
About 150 years ago, Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard observed, "There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming." ...
The reach of grace: The power of old stories
Students of Shakespeare know that the bard didn’t create his material solely out of his own imagination, but instead masterfully recrafted stories that were centuries old....
Faith-based doubts: Do we need another initiative?
Not many policy proposals from the 1990s can be trotted out a decade later in almost exactly the same form....
Century Marks
Think twice about ethanol: Before you buy a car that uses E85 (ethanol-based) fuel, consider this: ethanol-burning vehicles consume 25 percent more fuel. In this country ethanol is mostly made from corn, and the amount of corn used to fill an SUV with ethanol could feed a person for a year (caranddriver.com).