Latest Articles
True compassion
It is hard not to conclude, given his recent stumbling about on the issue, that at some point prior to his 30th birthday Governor George W. Bush used cocaine....
Scouts' honor: A public-private confusion
The Boy Scouts of America want to exclude gays, atheists and agnostics. They think they have the right to do so because they are, they claim, a private, voluntary organization....
A catholic vision: At the ELCA assembly
"It's not the whole show," cried Presiding Bishop H. George Anderson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America prior to the denomination's Churchwide Assembly in Denver....
Imagining a new church: Disciples, not members
As the organizing pastor of a suburban congregation, I have experienced firsthand its faltering first steps, its seasons of growth and drought, and the Spirit's persistent attempts to help us ident...
Countering hatred: Neglect is not benign
In a nine-state area of the Midwest, 272 far-right-wing organizations—including Christian Identity, Christian Patriot, neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan groups—ply their racist and anti-Semitic ideologies....
The faith of the scholars: Theology and religious studies
The Politics of Religious Studies, by Donald Wiebe...
Why are they singing?
Our hosts in Estonia were somberly describing the challenges they faced in maintaining a Christian presence throughout the Soviet era....
Not-so-new age
Chesterton said that when people stop believing in God they do not believe in nothing, they believe in everything. That dictum is well illustrated in postsecular America....
The obedient son: Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:23-32
Radical obedience means going to the cross.
Telling details: No safe parts in scripture
"Avoid abstraction," I was told as I prepared to speak to a group of junior high school students....
Intimate partners
Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth: A Study in Biography and the History of Theology, by Suzanne Selinger...
Growing Up Religious, by Robert Wuthnow
American religious life is in ferment, not decline....
Financing American Religion, edited by Mark Chaves and Sharon L. Miller
This compact, valuable book brings together the most important current research on faith and money....
Listening for God, by Renita J. Weems
While most of us grit our teeth and slog through times of spiritual dryness hoping that nobody will notice, Renita Weems looks these times straight in the face....
Creation mysteries: The evolution debate
Forty percent of Americans favor teaching "creation science" instead of evolution in public schools. Fully 68 percent would like to see creationism taught alongside evolution....
Crisis of fatherhood: When dad is missing
Fatherhood is in trouble in the black community, and throughout American society....
Washing away, washing up
I saw my wife, Judy, cringe the first time she read the children's book Noah's Ark to our son, Nathanael. "A long time ago there lived a man called Noah....
The inner history
Sidney E. Mead died this summer at age 94. With Sidney Ahlstrom he dominated the study of American religious history a generation or two ago....