Features
A tale of two Thanksgivings
Two adjacent items in a 1943 issue of The Saturday Evening Post highlight the conflict—and joy—inherent in our mythic meal.
Gifts you can read
What can we say? We love words.
Songs that call me home to Puerto Rico
Bad Bunny’s music and activism have reconnected me to roots I thought were severed beyond repair.
Pastors in exile
Clergy who have fled Russian-occupied Ukraine are finding new ways to provide pastoral care for parishioners who are still there.
Born a feminist
Phyllis Trible mesmerized scholars and preachers alike with her fearless biblical exegesis.
When Caesar gets demanding
“What will be God’s,” asks Tertullian, “if all things are Caesar’s?” It’s a challenging question at a time when the state is asking us to acquiesce to a secret, unaccountable police force.
“That girl from Andover”
Phyllis Trible gave me two gifts: her groundbreaking biblical scholarship and an unassuming friendship.
God’s relentless gaze
Like the surveillance state, the Christ Pantocrator icon asserts an omnipresent authority. But it also asserts divine mercy and love.
Sarah Mullally breaks the Anglican Communion’s glass ceiling
I celebrate the milestone of the first woman to become archbishop of Canterbury. But I worry there’s a glass cliff waiting for her.
The reverent, subversive Gilead
Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer–winning novel speaks unflinchingly of God, grace, sacred luminosity, and humility. This reads a lot differently now than it did 20 years ago.
Please, liberal Christians, read Eugene Peterson
I’m not too proud to beg.
DHS is lying about us
The protesters at the ICE facility outside Chicago are not an angry mob. We’re just people who believe in due process and free speech.
The parasocial power of AI
For some reason, it is sometimes easier for us to see personhood in a chatbot than in a fellow human.
Yes, Charlie Kirk was a missionary
Trump is right about this—but not for the reasons he claimed.
Mapping my city’s moral geography
When I returned to Harrisonburg, I began to see how the built environment reflects and shapes our values and desires.
Praying the imprecatory psalms with Bonhoeffer
How did these psalms about enemies feel in 1940? How do they feel today?
When theology kills
Ruth Miller’s beliefs led to multiple deaths. Is my own faith giving life or taking it?
The Kirk assassination and the scandal of enemy love
The kind of love Jesus taught may not be popular. But the alternative has already shown its rotten fruit.
Postliberalism and the romantic lie
I love René Girard. I don’t love that J. D. Vance loves him, too.
The fear of being filmed
Tyler, the Creator’s album Don’t Tap the Glass suggests that our phone cameras pose a threat to our embodied human freedom.