Latest Articles
Seeking the lost sheep: Exodus 32: 7-14Psalm 51: 1-101 Timothy 1: 12-17Luke 15: 1-10
"The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners . . ." (1 Timothy 1:15)....
Protestantism and the quest for certainty
In the course of my career as a sociologist of religion I made one big mistake and had one big insight (arguably not such a bad record)....
Division and conflict in Israel: A Jewish-Christian exchange
Yehezkel Landau and Tom Getman recently met over lunch in East Jerusalem to discuss political and spiritual issues....
She who truly loves
The first thing I saw was a tear--an unforgettable giant tear in the big brown eye of a ten-year-old girl. Then I saw tears in her mother's eyes....
It’s in the blood
About 30 years ago, in a doctoral examination, a student, Trygve Skarsten, a colleague, R. Pierce Beaver, and I, the historian of religion, got into a colloquy about ancient pagan rites of Norway....
The future of family
Edited by Phyllis D. Airhart and Margaret Lamberts Bendroth, Faith Traditions and the Family. (Westminster John Knox, 172 pp.)...
The Battered Wife, by Nancy Nason-Clark
By Nancy Nason-Clark, The Battered Wife: How Christians Confront Family Violence. (Westminster John Knox, 155 pp.)...
Lost Highway, by Richard Currey
By Richard Currey, Lost Highway. (Houghton Mifflin, 258 pp.)...
Making theology cinematic: Connections: ‘Bulworth’ and ‘Mickey One’
Novelist John Irving quotes François Mauriac: “God doesn’t care at all--what we write--but when we do it right, He can use it.” I have a story I want to relate, but Mauriac’s admonition is intimida...
The Great Tribulation
I suppose we are in the minority now, but there are still some of us who preach on the saints of the church....
Jesus is my pitching coach
Having retired from teaching, I find I have time on my hands. I had been thinking of resuming an interest in baseball, an interest abandoned after childhood....
Abundant life (Luke 14:1, 7-14)
The most precisely regulated social order that I’ve experienced was junior high school....
The next C. S. Lewis?
By Stanley J. Grenz, What Christians Really Believe-and Why. (Westminster John Knox, 159 pp.)...
Twenty Questions, by Paul McComas
By Paul McComas, Twenty Questions: A Collection of Short and Very Short Stories. (Fithian, 176 pp.)...
Vouch for it? Vouchers and religious schools: Vouchers and religious schools
The founder of this magazine, Charles Clayton Morrison, was fiercely opposed to any form of government support for parochial schools....
Free fall: Religious pluralism in Russia
One cannot call the religious situation in contemporary Russia stable. There are divisions not only between different religions or Christian confessions, but within the Russian Orthodox Church....
Christians in Pakistan confront charges of blasphemy
Roman Catholic Bishop John Joseph of Pakistan shot himself to death on May 6 to highlight the case of Ayub Massih, a Christian sentenced to death for supposedly making blasphemous remarks against t...
God in a pocket: Jeremiah 23:23-29;Psalm 82;Hebrews 11:29-12:2;Luke 12:49-56
“Am I a God near by, says the Lord, and not a God far off?”Jeremiah 23:23...
Three Samaritans
Several years ago, when my wife and I were living in Pittsburgh for most of a year, we set out to attend worship in a church where a friend was the pastor....