There are many people with whom I have not had an affair. Billions. There is also one man in particular.
Reinhold Niebuhr once broke with the editor of this magazine to argue that moral responsibility requires resisting evil with force. It’s a compelling argument, but it doesn’t justify torture.
U.S. churches have long sought better relations with Christians in Cuba. The political thaw will make this much easier.
It’s been 100 years since your birth and almost 75 since you entered the abbey. You died with your story unfinished.
Many scholars have traced the intra-Christian conflicts over slavery. Less noticed are the situations in which Christians were themselves enslaved.
Sympathy for Pharaoh
Exodus: Gods and Kings has more in common with the 2004 sword-and-sandal disaster Alexander than with the other biblical epics of 2014.
Idolatry seems like such an easy thing to avoid.
Paul isn’t asking us to avoid the world. But if the form of the world is passing away, the everyday is becoming a step into promise.
The Sixth Extinction, by Elizabeth Kolbert
For Elizabeth Kolbert, the human story reads like a Greek tragedy. Near the end, we realize too late that we brought about our own demise.
Visions of Amen, by Stephen Schloesser
Stephen Schloesser considers Olivier Messiaen and his music through the lens of a broad-based cultural history. This is fitting and welcome.
The world slavery made
Edward Baptist so powerfully captures the pain and tragedy of plantation slavery that I had to force myself to turn each page.
Faith Speaking Understanding, by Kevin J. Vanhoozer
Kevin Vanhoozer demonstrates that Christian thought is a more engaging, embodied affair than much that passes for thinking these days.
Mercy, by Walter Kasper
Walter Kasper contends that mercy is one of those words that we use without really grasping its profundity.