Features
Families of faith: Sociologist Vern Bengtson
Dress code: Case by case
A response to "Dress code" Case by case: Case by case
Worship on the run: A new kind of church
So much for unity
Voices
Philip Jenkins
Slaughter in East Timor
For decades, Western human rights groups sounded the alarm about East Timor. Rarely did they note the religious dimension.
Carol Zaleski
Poetry and dogma
As we unpack the same ornaments, read the same stories and entertain the same deep thoughts our ancestors did, we have every reason to be gloriously unoriginal.
Books
A Land without Sin, by Paula Huston
John Updike: The Collected Stories, edited by Christopher Carduff
To read John Updike is to remember just how upper-middle-class and masculine his fictional universe is.
Before the Door of God, edited by Jay Hopler and Kimberly Johnson
Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish, by David Rakoff
It's easy to write off David Rakoff's novel in verse as a cliché. But Rakoff was master enough of his craft that his rhymes lapse into doggerel only when he chooses.
Warrior God
How are we to reconcile the Old Testament's violence with the gospel? Jerome Creach's book is among the best of a recent stream of books on the topic.