Features
A season of repentance: An open letter to United Methodists
A proposal: Let us stop fighting one another, for a season, about issues of sexuality, so that we can focus on what God is saying to the church about our complicity in the violence that is the deepest moral crisis of our time. And let us call the church to fasting and prayer in repentance for the destruction our nation has inflicted upon the people of Iraq.
Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God? Fifth in a series
In late 2003 President Bush said, in response to a reporter's question, that he believed Muslims and Christians "worship the same God." The remark sparked criticism from some Christians, who thought Bush was being politically correct but theologically inaccurate. For example, Ted Haggard, head of the National Association of Evangelicals, said, "The Christian God encourages freedom, love, forgiveness, prosperity and health. The Muslim god appears to value the opposite."
Liberalism after 9/11: E. J. Dionne on what's right about the left
For the past decade E. J. Dionne has written a column on politics for the Washington Post that has been syndicated to more than 90 other newspapers. An unabashedly liberal Catholic, Dionne has trenchantly analyzed the policies and strategies of left and right while calling for a revival of progressive politics in the tradition of FDR’s New Deal.
Secret agent
Adapted from one of Robert Ludlum’s bestsellers, The Bourne Identity was one of the exciting entertainments of 2002. Matt Damon played the hero, a man hauled out of the drink who digs two bullets out of his back and finds a Swiss bank account number implanted in his hip. He has no recollection of who he is, but he’s exceptionally strong and resourceful. Eventually he discovers he’s Jason Bourne, the graduate of a covert CIA program for assassins called Treadstone, and that at some deep level his humanity recoiled from a mission and he couldn’t complete it.
Pursuing Kerry
Complaints about John Kerry’s “religion problem” are of a piece with complaints about his personality. Kerry is emotionally cool and rhetorically uninspiring. He does not emote religious feeling—or much of any feeling.
Voices
Barbara Brown Taylor
Teaching contempt: Neighborly alternatives
Everyone needs someone to tell her she has spinach in her teeth, preferably before she has spent 15 minutes wondering why her table companions are so taken with her smile. One friend recently crossed a gender boundary to help me with a similar problem lower down.
“XYZ,” he said, when we rose from eating lunch together.
“Huh?” I said.
Books
Call to arms
No Regrets: A Ten-Step Program for Living in the Present and Leaving the Past Behind
