Feature

For some churches in North Dakota, the oil boom is a threat. For others it's an opportunity to relate to new neighbors.

In a slum settlement outside Cairo, Coptic Christians do a dirty job that no one else wants to do.

The community Thanksgiving service would be at the Southern Baptist church that year, but it was Madeline's church's turn to supply the preacher.

"Supersessionism is like a submerged resentment that infects all our social relationships. That's why overcoming it is so important."

"About a third of the women in my study felt stigmatized by churches. Some mentioned not having nice clothes; some were ashamed of being on welfare."

Decision making may have less to do with rational assessment than perceived risk. Is this why even well-reasoned church initiatives don't always succeed?

"We aren't the first people to experience God as the slice and the stitches at the exact same time. The paradox is ancient. Jesus embodied it."

There are specific and cunning temptations in silence that, if allowed to flourish, can fester and rot the whole enterprise.

I don't settle automatically into the silence of solitude. At first the silence can be as startling as noise.

The Sudanese government has long waged war on its own people. In the borderland of Abyei, it's turned two peaceful groups into enemies.

"After 9/11, religion was put on the State Department's agenda—as a source of conflict. But religion can also be a force for peace."

Netanyahu's fragile new coalition government reflects gradual but steady changes in Israeli society.

In April 1993, the FBI siege on the Branch Davidian compound ended in disaster. The event still casts a long shadow on our divided nation.

I switched to a digital Bible for ease and versatility. But I gave something up: a sense of the sweeping history of God's engagement with God's people.

Might Christian nostalgia—wrapped in a cape dress and sealed with a kiss—have an interest in the future as well as the past?

When you buy a used book, it's like joining a conversation in progress—a conversation that may outlast you.

Desirable as living forever may sound, it invites us to forget another kind of desire that we creatures should not quench.

Does consuming violent media lead to a greater propensity toward violence? If anything, the data points in the opposite direction.

American culture focuses on the law. But Naboth's vineyard reminds us that a healthy society is about relationships first and rules second.