Latest Articles
My hometown: A place to stand to view the world
Sixty-nine years after I moved away, I still read the West Point News, the weekly in my Nebraska hometown....
The breath of life: Acts 2:14a, 22-32; Psalm 16; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31
The psalmist has a body, and it figures prominently in his poetry. His kidneys lash him, his heart rejoices, his pulse (or liver) beats with joy....
Scandalous forgiveness: Luke 24:13-35
Appearing to two nobodies going nowhere is an interesting choice.
Tying knots: A pastor's wedding adventures
The bride wore a white dress with pearls, a veil and a big red nose. The groom had a rainbow wig, and instead of patent leather shoes, floppy brogues as big as boats, which were coming apart at the toes. All around them a raucous band of clowns held forth on tubas and big bass drums. “Do you, Gilbert, take Glenna to be your wife?” “I sure do.” “Do you, Glenna, take this clown to be your husband?” “I do,” she smiled, and someone honked a horn.
Still on a mission
Walter Russell Mead was an early advocate of expanding American power in the vacuum left by the end of the cold...
Finding the body
Kate Braestrup’s memoir is all about bodies: living and dead, lost and found....
W. E. B. Du Bois: American Prophet
Before Martin Luther King Jr. there was W. E. B. Du Bois. Like King, Du Bois was a civil rights activist....
Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days
Part of what makes Romanian director Cristian Mungiu’s Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days so fascinating is its rambling, almost improvisational style....
Morning breath
The first thing the resurrected Jesus does in the presence of his disciples in the Upper Room is breathe....
Encountering the resurrection
The music is out in brassy force, the altar flowers are in full
bloom, and the sanctuary is full of people not seen since December....
Doors open to the city: The privilege of serving downtown
Having had the privilege of serving downtown churches in Columbus, Ohio, and in Chicago, I have watched city churches struggle to respond faithfully to dramatically changing environments....
False witnesses: A plea for truth telling
When was the last time you heard a sermon about the Ninth Commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor”?...
Century Marks
Advice for fledgling authors: The late Aldous Huxley was often asked by aspiring writers for advice. Once, after reading a manuscript, Huxley gave this advice to its author: “You would do better, I believe, to leave the book for a year or two, forget it, then take it out, read it with new eyes and re-write it” (Times Literary Supplement, January 18).
Nation in peril: Dispatch from Kabul
At a center in Kabul for children affected by violence, a mother of one of the children cut through the niceties of the meeting—and the tradition of Afghan women being self-effacing—by declaring bi...
Family ties: Reading the story of the prodigal son in Turkey
The parable of the prodigal son came to have new meaning for me after I preached on the passage in a small Christian church in Turkey. My congregants could read meaning, for example, into the famine that the younger son experienced because our city is in the throes of a serious water shortage. We have gone without running water for days at a time. The reaction of the Turkish mayor was to call for public prayers for rain in the traditional Muslim fashion, and Turkish churches followed suit by praying for rain. It was a similar shortage that drove the prodigal son to desperation and created an occasion for repentance.
Rowan Williams's remarks on Islamic law spark furor: "Misleading choice of words"
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams triggered a storm of controversy by suggesting that Britain should adopt some aspects of Islam’s tough Shari‘a laws into its legal system....