Features
Expectant giving: Handouts are wrong (usually)
A few months ago, I knowingly harmed an indigent woman named Jacqueline. She was standing at the end of the exit ramp, holding up the predictable sign: "Homeless. Please Help." I parked the car and doubled back to talk to her. She and her "old man" had come from a city a few hours east, she said. For the last few days they'd been sleeping under a small cluster of leafy trees a stone's throw from the Interstate.
Books
Drug policy: The fix we're in
By Michael Massing, The Fix. (Simon & Schuster, 335 pp.)...
China's insular church
By Richard Madsen, China's Catholics: Tragedy and Hope in an Emerging Civil Society. (University of California Press, 183 pp.)...
American Evangelicalism, by Christian Smith, with Michael Emerson, Sally Gallagher, Paul Kennedy and David Sikkink
By Christian Smith, with Michael Emerson, Sally Gallagher, Paul Kennedy and David Sikkink, American Evangelicalism....
Departments
Life on the playground
Across the street from the Christian Century's offices there used to be a wholesale outlet that sold barber supplies....
Death-penalty doubts
The death penalty has been brought before our consciences again by three recent events. The first was Pope John Paul II's visit to St. Louis in January, where he persuaded Missouri's governor to commute the death sentence of Darrell Mease....
Surfeit of significance
One of my worst fears recently materialized in-of all places-the post office. It was lunch hour on a busy day....
Lectionary
Strangers in the night: John 4:5-42
Only one who loves you knows your deepest desires.