KonMari approaches clutter by asking just one question: "Does this item spark joy?" But this isn't always a simple question.
A poor person looking up at my residence could mistake it for one of the barns belonging to the rich man Jesus talked about—the one who didn't know his soul was buried beneath all that corn and sorghum.
Trump does well among those who identify as evangelical—but lack deep formation in faith. Formation fixes people’s eyes on higher things.
If the church is the bride of Christ, then Jesus is married to both Rachel and Leah—to the church he wants, and to the church he has to take.
New communities spring up at coffeehouses, on Habitat for Humanity worksites, or at 5k races. What makes any of them a church?
In Concussion, Dr. Bennet Omalu is a Nigerian immigrant and an outsider. This status is complicated by competing ideas of what America is.
A shepherd’s staff has a crook for drawing the sheep away from danger, and a blunt end for prodding them toward places they would rather not go. This week’s texts embrace the tension between the two in the shepherd’s role.
As we encounter the post-resurrection Jesus in this week’s Gospel, brokenness and disappointment permeate—brokenness as thick as the morning mist off the Sea of Galilee, disappointment as pungent as the smell of fish.
The feminist Bushnell
Katharine Bushnell was a reforming whirlwind who left the mission field to campaign for temperance and against the sex trade.
Calvinists and eco-justice
Surprisingly, evidence showed that the environmental movement’s most significant moments were overwhelmingly led by lapsed Presbyterians.
Food Fight, by Chris Herlinger and Paul Jeffrey
Journalist Chris Herlinger teams up with Paul Jeffrey, a United Methodist pastor and photojournalist, to tell stories of people who suffer from hunger and who work to combat it. The causes of hunger across the world—war, climate change, sexism, colonialism, political wrangling, unemployment—are woven into individual stories of those who are poor and hungry.
So much Twain
Together, the three volumes are five inches tall and weigh more than my children did when they emerged from the sea of their mother.
Evolving into community
We all belong to a collective, evolutionary process in which we, like the ants, work together to build our community and preserve the species.
To the Table, by Lisa Graham McMinn
McMinn, a sociologist and co-owner of a small farm, presumes a certain level of privilege among her readers: choose heirloom seeds; eat only fair trade chocolate; avoid plastic food containers; and buy eggs “from a local source, if possible, and/or from chickens raised outside eating grass and bugs.” Still, this book is an enticing reflection on the sacramental nature of preparing and eating meals.