Feature

Just about every marketing card seems to be stacked against Amazing Grace. It’s not just that the film is a costume drama set in England at the turn of the 19th century, or that there are no big-name American actors in the cast. The real obstacle is the setting: it’s a movie about British politicians, in wigs, and the inner maneuverings of the British Parliament. Moreover, Amazing Grace speaks openly of Christian faith and the Bible’s demands for justice for all people—not a recipe for a blockbuster. Yet the film is genuinely inspiring.

Canned hunts constitute a burgeoning industry, in part because old-fashioned hunting in the wild has become more difficult—a consequence of diminishing ranges and herds and the encroachment of suburbia and exurbia. At present there are at least 1,000 canned-hunt operations in the U.S. (if bird preserves—which release birds just in time for the hunter to shoot at them—are included, the number is closer to 3,000).It is also a highly profitable industry. Here’s what the hunter pays: Axis deer, $1,350; Aoudad sheep, $1,500; buffalo, $3,000; elk, $3,500 and up; red sheep, $4,500.

For five years I was pastor of a congregation of mostly 20- and 30-somethings, a group some would call postmodern or “emergent.” Spirit Garage was born in the Uptown neighborhood of Minneapolis, an area populated by thousands of young people. In those days people would ask me about our model or formula for this ministry. I always found it hard to describe. But after taking up a new sport, I found an apt comparison: ministry in the postmodern era is like racing mountain bikes.

One of the privileges of studying theology within the clerical formation programs of the Catholic Church is that you get to study philosophy first. For at least three years. In retrospect, the true extent of the privilege becomes clearer: when it comes time to study theology, the pupil has been primed to interpret, to be able to remove words and concepts from the meaning foisted on them by the gut, to separate them from inherited baggage, and to begin to detect where contemporary religious ideology and real thought might begin to diverge, and how to follow the latter.

A decade ago most experts thought of global warming as the largest challenge civilization faced—but one that would happen relatively gradually. That cautious optimism has faded as one study after another has proved that the earth was more finely balanced than we’d understood. The climate crisis is bearing down on us much faster than most people realize. The temperature rise has started melting every frozen thing on earth. In the Arctic Ocean, white ice that reflected the sun’s rays is quickly turning into water that absorbs more of the sun’s heat. And, as the ice melts, there’s the very real chance of a catastrophic rise in sea levels.

After the November election, stories began circulating about Nancy Pelosi’s “mother of five” voice, the voice she uses to great effect with staff members and colleagues. Forged during the years she spent at home with her five children, Pelosi’s authoritative voice helped make this Californian Speaker of the House and the first woman to be within two rungs of the presidency. I call that progress.

On a recent trip to Jordan, no one directing my tour group objected to my meeting with Christian evangelicals. But the evangelicals were nervous.