Features
United we sing: Music and community
Early Christian writers recognized music's emotional power. Just as often, however, they commended it for its powers of harmony--in both the musical and extramusical sense.
Pursuing happiness
Unlike justice or courage, happiness is perceived as subjective, even inscrutable. So what does it mean to say that a person who claims to be happy is not?
Against religion: The case for faith
Faith, unlike religion, is ready to confess its radical incompleteness and insufficiency--indeed, its brokenness.
The KJV endureth: The 400th anniversary
I recently reread the biblical translation so familiar from my youth. I found its power and grandeur unabated, though some of the language has an odd ring today.
Disobedience: Direct action on global warming
Global warming is dry science, an entirely rational question that should be addressed by experts working on our behalf and with our thanks. But it's not happening.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The third Narnia film features a new director, Michael Apted. The good news is that Dawn Treader is a worthy successor to Andrew Adamson's splendiferous earlier entries.
Books
A review of The Children of Divorce
On the way to meet a friend whose marriage, I'd heard, was on the rocks, I sifted through the clichés one can offer someone on the verge of divorce....
A review of The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel
The classic tale of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd who journeys to Egypt to find the "Soul of the World," has been adapted as a graphic novel for the first time....
A review of Living Christianity
What ought to be the relationship between the church and the academy? Does professional theology matter for congregational life, and vice versa?...
On the move
When I hear the word immigration, I immediately think of friends, refugees from a war-torn country, who have spent more than 20 years and $30,000 trying to become legal U.S....
A review of Unbroken
Hillenbrand calls the life of Louie Zamperini, the subject of her new biography, "incomprehensibly dramatic." A record-breaking high school track star, competitor at the 1936 Berlin Olympics (where...
Departments
The Muslim Jesus
We could not get to Jesus without going through the origins of the two faiths that share him. Christianity and Islam disagree, but they disagree about the same Jesus.
A stinging critique
In the late 1970s a colleague handed me a copy of Douglas John Hall's Lighten Our Darkness: Towards an Indigenous Theology of the Cross. "I think you'll like this," she said....
Religion book beat
In my capacity as an editor for Baker Academic and Brazos Press, I annually attend the meetings of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature....
Spreading lies
It may seem hyperbolic for the Southern Poverty Law
Center to add large and highly visible advocacy organizations to the list of hate groups it monitors. But not all hate comes from the fringe.
News
Catholic school enrollment moves steadily downward
Not much keeps New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond up at night. But one thing does make him toss and turn....
Geneva-based ENInews suspends operation
Faced with a 50 percent cut in funding in 2011 from the World Council of Churches, the Geneva-based ENInews suspended its five-days-a-week news service on December 21....
Mary appeared thrice in Wisconsin, bishop says
In 1859, a Wisconsin farm woman recounted three mystical meetings
with the Virgin Mary, who told her to pray for the conversion of sinners
and teach children the Catholic faith....
As polls show doubt, Obama underscores Christian identity
When President Obama lit the National Christmas Tree behind the White
House in the 2009 ceremony, he spoke of a "child born far from home"
and said "while this story may be a Christian one, its lesson is
universal."...
Shaky economy imperils church pensions
Religious denominations have long provided retired clergy and staff
with secure pension payments--more secure, in some cases, than corporate
retirement plans. But some recent developments have drawn attention to...
Holder denies entrapment of Muslim suspects
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder defended the FBI's recent
undercover investigation of an Oregon Muslim terror suspect, saying that
Muslim critics who think it was a case of "entrapment" are wrong....
Study: Congregants happier with good friends in pews
Close friendships among churchgoers, rather than theology, seem to be
the key to happiness among religious people, according to a new study....
Germany experiments with training, certifying imams
As Islamic life and society claims an ever-larger place across
Western Europe, imams increasingly are being asked to provide guidance
to their immigrant and native-born Muslim congregations....
Fewer ‘Middle Americans’ marry or attend worship
Marriage among Americans who have graduated from high school but not
college is on the decline, and their religious attendance has dropped at
the same time, a new report shows....
Lectionary
Sunday, January 23, 2011: Matthew 4:12-23, Isaiah 1:9-4
There are places where Epiphany light shines through people who do the best of things in the worst of times.