Fiction and photographs offer nuanced depictions of conflict.

We need the prophets to unmask power’s seductions.

How a blunder in Argentina can teach us today. 

If God can be born in the wilderness, God can be born in the dry places of our lives.

In accepting her party’s nomination for a fourth term in office, German chancellor Angela Merkel delivered a speech that took aim at conservative critics of her liberal asylum policies, yet also embraced a proposal to ban the burqa.

As I lifted the chalice, the baby began to play soccer under my ribs.

When Joshua Case and parishioners at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church bury some of Atlanta’s youngest victims of violence, they often do so alone. In many cases, family members are absent from the child’s life, lack transportation to the cemetery, or are incarcerated. Some­times the state forbids them to attend.

For this brief, solemn service, Case, associate rector at Holy Innocents’, and the others become the child’s “family in mourning.”

Make me plow blade, implement
for the deep earth, forge me blue
with heat, Lord of flame, blow
strong the bellows, let the bellows
sing, baptize me in song, let ring

anvil, hammer, iron, tong, away
the slag, away the dull, draw me
sharp as the chine of a scythe,
sharp as sun glint, sharp as steel,
Lord of moldboard, coulter, land-

A Berkeley academic empathizes with antigovernment Louisianans.