Features
The sacred work of Jerusalem's Mekudeshet festival
Talking about racism on a college bus trip
James Comey read a lot of Reinhold Niebuhr. Did he learn anything?
Books
How Christian was Meister Eckhart?
The eccentric preacher's ideas hover between God's absolute otherness and God's self-revelation in Christ.
Marxism and the New Testament
As Roland Boer and Christina Petterson see it, the Gospels contradict the witness of Jesus about slavery and property.
Take & read: New books in Old Testament
Does biblical scholarship still matter for the life of faith?
Tracy K. Smith’s lovely, unflinching poems
Smith is acutely aware of injustice and violence—and remarkably hopeful about the possibility of reconciliation.
Tribalism is natural. It's also destroying us.
Amy Chua considers why we cling to people who look and act like us.
Take & read: New books in theology
Theology lives in the space between apocalypticism and Christian Platonism.
Why human rights and global ethics are inadequate concepts
In a globalized world, Michael Ignatieff argues, grand moral values have failed. What's left is virtue.
Take & read: New books in ethics
What does hope look like in the face of racism?
Radical orthodoxy steps into the pulpit
The movement's plucky proponents have been known for their philosophy more than their preaching. Until now.
A life worth living, but for how long?
In their new novels, Dara Horn and Chloe Benjamin play with themes of mortality and free will.
In praise of (imperfect) images
Depictions of Jesus reveal God—but never adequately.
Marilynne Robinson's beautiful, cranky nonfiction
Robinson's essays are sometimes tedious. Yet they provide glimpses of the capacious faith undergirding her novels.
Essential reading: Fiction
We asked some of our favorite novelists and poets to tell us about three recent works of fiction that speak to them in a deep way.
Christian Wiman and the poetry of joy
In this anthology of poems selected by Wiman, joy comes in modest and unlikely guise.
Miguel De La Torre’s ethic of hopelessness
De La Torre has little use for hope in a God who only seems to show up for Christians, never for their victims.
An American childhood in Haiti
Apricot Irving writes with love—and hurt—about her father's misplaced desire to be a savior to others.
The black social gospel and the civil rights movement
Gary Dorrien chronicles the influential—but often forgotten—work of Mordecai Johnson, Benjamin Mays, and Howard Thurman.
Departments
When churches fly like starlings
St. Jerome, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Kendrick Lamar, public theologian
The U.S. needs to accept more refugees
“You can be whatever you wish” and other myths
News
Indonesian entrepreneur donates $5 million to divinity school for global Christianity studies
Tandean Rustandy, a business graduate of the University of Chicago, is funding scholarship at the Divinity School to broaden how Christianity is taught.
Church acts as mediator in Nicaragua unrest, addresses corruption in Honduran government
Nicaraguan church leaders are among those decrying a violent response to protests. And in Honduras, a Jesuit-run radio station has charged the government with becoming a dictatorship.
Baylor seminary names 12 leading preachers among English speakers
The seminary's Lake Center for Effective Preaching surveyed homiletics professors and chose from more than 800 nominees.
Immigrants reinvigorate Methodist churches in Britain, home of tradition's founders
Congregations that might've closed their doors received an influx of Methodists from West Africa and elsewhere.
Black liberation theologian James Cone dies at 79
In portraying Christ’s blackness, he upended the assumptions of a field dominated by white theologians and helped spawn other theories of liberation.
Despite being targets of violence, Congolese priests and aid workers continue to confront crisis
Several priests and aid workers have been kidnapped, and earlier this month a priest was murdered. Conflict in several regions has left millions in need.
U.S. Assemblies of God elects first woman executive in more than a century
Donna L. Barrett is stepping into a top leadership role in the world’s largest Pentecostal denomination.
Francis admits misjudgment in Chile sex abuse case
The pope said he lacked full information about a bishop, but other Chilean bishops said they told him the truth. He summoned them all for a rare emergency meeting.
Indian state recognizes 800-year-old tradition as a separate religion
Lingayat Dharma “started as a revolt and protest against Hindu orthodoxy,” said a leader in the movement advocating status as a minority faith.