Brian Bantum
At home with the Baptists
At my first gathering of Baptists in decades, I found something I didn’t know I was missing: testimony.
Voices
The Century’s bimonthly columnists
Peter Choi
A desert gospel in San Francisco
In Mark’s wilderness and in my city, life emerges in unexpected ways.
Phil Christman
An agnostic who out-Christianed the Christians
The 19th-century orator Robert Ingersoll denied God. But his answer to the question of human purpose strikes me as a pretty good one.
Julian DeShazier
Confessions of a snob
My snob origin story begins in the typical way: with passion.
Kelly Brown Douglas
A politics of grievance in the vineyard
The language may change, but Matthew 20’s underlying question remains: Who belongs, and who does not?
Benjamin J. Dueholm
Black holes and supernovas
One kind of pastor collapses everything into themself. The other expands until they forget where they started.
Melissa Florer-Bixler
Citizenship by fiat
Political belonging isn’t naturally grounded in land, ancestry, or anything else. It is based on decisions that governments make and continually revise.
Rachel Mann
From shame to gift
Humans have a special talent for screwing things up. I think acknowledging this offers liberation.
Alejandra Oliva
Lessons from the group chat
What makes these friendships so special—and the distance so hard—is the deep sense that we are called to be witnesses to each other’s lives.
Stephanie Perdew
American Decius
The Roman emperor staged a patriotic revival to win back the gods’ favor. The empire fell anyway.
Stephanie Saldaña
The wounds of Catholic women
When the Vatican rejected a bid to allow laypeople to preach at mass, I felt again the toll of being dismissed by the church I call home.
Debie Thomas
Christ in my nerve endings
Living with chronic pain is deepening my understanding of the incarnation.
Latest in Voices
Kelly Brown Douglas
A politics of grievance in the vineyard
The language may change, but Matthew 20’s underlying question remains: Who belongs, and who does not?
Rachel Mann
From shame to gift
Humans have a special talent for screwing things up. I think acknowledging this offers liberation.
Stephanie Saldaña
The wounds of Catholic women
When the Vatican rejected a bid to allow laypeople to preach at mass, I felt again the toll of being dismissed by the church I call home.
Julian DeShazier
Confessions of a snob
My snob origin story begins in the typical way: with passion.
Alejandra Oliva
Lessons from the group chat
What makes these friendships so special—and the distance so hard—is the deep sense that we are called to be witnesses to each other’s lives.
Peter Choi
A desert gospel in San Francisco
In Mark’s wilderness and in my city, life emerges in unexpected ways.
Kelly Brown Douglas
The whole, contradictory truth
Martin Luther King Jr. worked to expose the distance between what the United States professed and what it practiced.
Stephanie Saldaña
Disarm me
Christian de Chergé’s prayer, from a time of civil war, has become Pope Leo’s prayer—and mine.
Melissa Florer-Bixler
Citizenship by fiat
Political belonging isn’t naturally grounded in land, ancestry, or anything else. It is based on decisions that governments make and continually revise.
Benjamin J. Dueholm
Black holes and supernovas
One kind of pastor collapses everything into themself. The other expands until they forget where they started.
Rachel Mann
Holy impatience
I’m tired of waiting for justice. But I am learning to face a world coming to an end with the gift of God who is World Without End.
Stephanie Saldaña
Strangers no more
The compassion of Iraqi and Syrian migrants I’ve met has transformed me—and challenged my vocabulary.
Phil Christman
An agnostic who out-Christianed the Christians
The 19th-century orator Robert Ingersoll denied God. But his answer to the question of human purpose strikes me as a pretty good one.
Peter Choi
Beginning where the gospels begin
The four books open in very different settings. Together they offer a map for locating ourselves in the world.
Rachel Mann
Asking “Who am I?” with Bonhoeffer
As I face unexpected early retirement, I tell myself that the answer is not yet known.
Benjamin J. Dueholm
A religion too wild to nationalize
After 250 years, US Christianity remains too diverse, splintered, and strange to be conscripted into any one political project.
Stephanie Perdew
American Decius
The Roman emperor staged a patriotic revival to win back the gods’ favor. The empire fell anyway.
Julian DeShazier
Does it matter what happened?
After years of listening to people tell their stories, I’ve begun to think that healing depends less on facts than on meaning.