A growing number of UMC clergy are performing same-sex weddings in open defiance of the Book of Discipline. What happens next?
Frightened disciples—cowering behind a bolted door—emerged from hiding as fearless and fierce followers. What changed them was the conviction that their crucified friend was alive.
The RFRA is a good law. But it wasn’t designed to grant religious rights to businesses—or to let people impose their beliefs on others.
In a culture that finds repentance unintelligible, impractical, or unnecessary, we are called to witness to its intelligibility, beauty, and importance.
I once presented Africa as a region of extreme poverty, but we now have to take account of economic development. We can only begin to outline the religious consequences.
Cohle and Hart are magnetic and unforgettable. But True Detective's existential heft never exceeds the palaver of a 101 class.
Thomas discerns what neither Mary Magdalene nor the other disciples did: that Jesus is both “my Lord and my God.” I wonder if we need to explore more seriously Thomas’s approach to faith. We sing “We Walk by Faith and Not by Sight,” but what is wrong with walking by both?
This Colossians reading is one of those distilled, cryptic passages that draws us into so much more than we can imagine. Such verses expand our capacity to wonder and give praise. They invite us into God’s mystery.
Invasion of the Dead, by Brian K. Blount
Brian Blount mounts a sweeping plea for bold preaching about the God who invades and routes death. Resurrection, he argues, transforms all of us “living dead” into witnesses.
Reformed and antimodern
Some classic works on the origins of modernity give pride of place to Calvinism. D. G. Hart will have none of it.
In Defence of War, by Nigel Biggar
Nigel Biggar thinks that Western Christians are willfully ignoring that soldiers and military action are essential to social peace and justice.