Latest Articles
Architecture for the Gods, by Michael J. Crosbie
Crosbie has no particular thesis about what architecture is fit for the gods....
Life without labels: Misleading terms
The words liberal and conservative, Garry Wills once observed, are the most misleading terms in the world....
Cuban-American dialogues: Letter from Miami
The camera panned away from a garbage fire in the middle of the street and followed the young men who had set it. The men were calling to a nearby band of demonstrators....
Abiding love: John 15:1-17; 1 John 5:1-6
I am not an avid gardener. I like the outdoors but would rather hike or bicycle in it than work in it....
AIDS in South Africa: Why the churches matter: A "realistic" sexual morality
South Africa has the world’s second largest AIDS epidemic (in gross numbers). Its neighbor, Zimbabwe, ranks first....
Sub-Saharan scourge: sidebar
The aids epidemic is so widespread in some countries that U.S....
Compassionate conspiracy: AIDS action in Namibia: The church has the infrastructure
When Sister Raphaela Händler arrived in Namibia in 1996 to coordinate the country’s Roman Catholic hospitals and health-care clinics, she realized that AIDS was a “time bomb” about to burst....
Giving life to meaning: Women leaders write their memoirs
Lanterns: A Memoir of Mentors, by Marian Wright Not Till I Have Done: A Personal Testimony, by Elizabeth Achtemeier...
Letter bombs
Several years ago Carly Simon recorded a CD titled “Letters Never Sent.” The songs reflect a collection of letters she wrote over the years but never sent to the intended recipients....
On the altar
Missionaries’ faith—the kind of faith that inspired and impelled men and women to take the gospel into all the world—seems to lie beyond poet Oliver Reynolds’s ken....
Jesus scenarios
Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity, by Paula Fredriksen...
Dependent Rational Animals, by Alasdair MacIntyre
Are humans really different from animals and, if so, how? And what difference does the answer make for our understanding of human morality?...
A jungle peace
The U.S. Congress is debating President Clinton’s request for a $1.6 billion aid package for Colombia, our troubled South American neighbor....
Attending to the kids: Partnerships with public schools
Discussions of education have been dominated in recent years by arguments for and against school choice: Should governments offer tax-funded vouchers for use at religious and other private schools?...
Out of Egypt: Faith at work
I have been writing recently about the connection between our Christian faith and the workaday lives most of us lead, and I have sought to strengthen that connection....
Unless someone guides me: Acts 8:26-40; 1 John 4:7-21
The First Church of St. John, or “the community of the beloved disciple,” as the late Raymond Brown called it, seems a lot like the church around the corner when you read between the lines....
The hopeful years: Children of the South Bronx: In the classroom and beyond
April 10. A Sunny afternoon, but cool. The kids are in the big room at St. Ann’s, an Episcopal church in New York’s South Bronx....
Falling behind: An interview with Jonathan Kozol: Language and labels in educational policy
The greatest difference between now and 1964, when I began teaching, is that public policy has pretty much eradicated the dream of Martin Luther King. In fact, the public schools today are every bit as segregated as they were in 1964.
Scaling a sandy slope
"Incredible wealth” and “breathless pace”—these are two of the most prominent features of Western societies as the old millennium ends and the new begins....
Juicy quotes
Some years ago a writer in the Washington Post made a snide comment about evangelicals of the southern persuasion, saying that they were dim-witted ignoramuses....