Features
What Gen Z knows about the church
It’s not that they know nothing; it’s just that we don’t like to talk about what they know.
Dolly Parton’s faith was hard to measure
But it was at the heart of her immeasurable legacy.
How much is too much?
In the fourth century, Basil of Caesarea argued that wealth doesn’t just tempt the rich. At some point it warps their ability to see the world at all.
What the border wall does
I went to Tijuana with a group of US Christians to confront the theology embodied by a steel barrier three stories tall.
Douglas Wilson’s theology of victim blaming
The Christian nationalist pastor proposes that women are responsible for preventing men from committing sexual violence—by being subservient to them.
My dying best friend’s wedding
She collapsed on the sidewalk the night of my wedding. Eighteen months later, I stood by her hospital bed and offered to plan hers.
The faith of an empire
Religious leaders supplied the motives for American expansionism—along with the means and the opportunity.
The future of dying?
Physician-assisted suicide is morally complex. For Christians, it requires wrestling theologically with concepts like suffering, autonomy, and dignity.
The social failure behind assisted suicide
Why are people in pain? Why are their illnesses incurable? Neither advocates nor opponents of PAS tend to ask these questions.
Afro-pessimism and Christian hope
Reading Saidiya Hartman alongside Vincent Lloyd has helped me get through the night.
Can this far-right Christian militia de-radicalize?
The Bratstvo Battalion was once known for its antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. Now it’s fighting alongside diverse Ukrainians to save the country from Russia.
Escape to Mars?
The ultrarich are planning their exit from a dying planet. Christian apocalyptic theology has a different ending in mind.
Dorothy Day never spoke of her abortion
A century later, I refuse to stay quiet about mine—despite the Catholic Worker movement’s tradition of silence.
Augustine gave me a language for staying alive
The Korean concept of hwa-yang-yeon-hwa has helped me embody the theologian’s idea of the beata vita.
The church’s crisis of vocational theology
What would Frederick Buechner say about the world’s persistent hunger for gladless jobs?
A betrayal of refuge
In immigrant congregations, deportation anxiety can silence survivors and shield abusers.
Whose Christian nationalism?
If political power were distributed based on a census of the founding era, the United States would be run by Episcopalians and Congregationalists.
Music during wartime
David Byrne reminds me that however bleak things seem, singing and dancing together are morally serious acts.
What does AI reveal about creation and vocation?
In the biblical imagination, God’s words bring the world into existence by command. Human speech accomplishes something different.
Donald McGavran’s complicated legacy
The founder of the church growth movement was full to bursting with intercultural adaptation and anti-racist struggle. How did he become the darling of White segregationist Christians?