Books
Moral constructions of HIV
Once gay men were identified in public as the primary victims of and imagined cause of the disease, it became a moral crisis rather than a medical one.
War No More, edited by Lawrence Rosenwald
This comprehensive collection, spanning 300 years and 150 authors, includes excerpts from political writers such as Martin Luther King Jr., Daniel Berrigan, Dorothy Day, Shirley Chisholm, and Barack Obama, but also a surprising array of artistic voices: Mark Twain, Joan Baez, Denise Levertov, and Bill Watterson.
Ordinary grace
The reversals in this book aren’t easy. There is nothing sentimental or giddy about them. They are real. They are ordinary.
Papal politics and perils
Politi's account reveals much of what happened among the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel on those days in March 2013.
Light’s remaining mysteries
Yes, we’re surrounded by ubiquitous light, but its mysteries have not been wholly conquered.
Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, by Max Porter
Max Porter’s debut novel, which hovers between poetry and prose, illustrates the ways in which grief can be simultaneously violent and gentle.
Missionaries among Muslims
To lionize the missionary’s courage, Muslims were cast as implacable adversaries and served as the quintessential foil.
How does it end?
The apocalypse, it seems, is cultural and psychological rather than historical. One can only hope that this theory is right.
Can hunger end?
The binding constraint on progress against hunger and malnutrition is weak political commitment.
The Year of Lear, by James Shapiro
From our 21st-century perch, William Shakespeare seems more reclusive than ever.
Too good for this world
If your mother is drowning in one location and two strangers in another, should you save your mother or the two strangers?
A diverse communion
Ebenezer Kinnersly illustrates the depth of the controversy over outward manifestations of inner religious experience.
Glorify, by Emily C. Heath
United Church of Christ pastor and blogger Emily Heath is a self-described binary-smashing, trinitarian, gender-nonconforming Reformed theologian.
The mysteries of young Augustine
Confessions is not primarily about Augustine at all; it is about God’s activity in the particularity of Augustine’s life.
Selling the Reformation
Luther understood the “aesthetics of the book” but not the economics of the book. He never made a pfennig from his publications.
Beethoven for a Later Age, by Edward Dusinberre
The sacred is experienced in liminal spaces where profound silence happens. But behind the silence is activity.
Transformed by Spirit-Chi
The Spirit’s loving, life-giving, transformative power—Divine Eros—connects us, moves within us, and can heal the wounds of our division.
The Woman, the Hour, and the Garden, by Addison Hodges Hart
Hart’s vision is at once allegorical, moral, and eschatological. Christ, married to the church, draws us into deeper life with God.
Shadows of a saint
Williams was at once theologian, mystic, poet, novelist, editor, playwright, and critic, not to mention (possibly) a living Anglican saint.
The morality of drone warfare
How might Christian communities take up war-making and peacemaking as acts of discipleship?