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Several years ago I taught a Sunday School class on the Saint John's Bible, a beautiful hand-calligraphed and illustrated version of the Bible that took several years and a whole team of artists to create. I showed the class a video about how the project came together, and the class was spellbound, as I knew they'd be. The illuminations make you want to lean into the scripture. The Saint John's Bible fosters awe and wonder toward the God who gives us not only the sacred story but also the artists who make it come alive. Near the end of the video, the narrator shares the cost of this tremendous project.

One pastor in New Orleans would end every examination by asking, “What is your favorite work of fiction?” The other ministers collectively groaned. But I applauded the question. To be in South Louisiana meant being in a land of stories. As this NYT article observed, South Louisiana is “a place that produces writers the way that France produces cheese—prodigiously, and with world-class excellence.”

The Enlightenment view of autonomous human subjects is built into the law, so the criminal justice system floats on myths and superstitions.

Luke grounds the resurrection narrative in tangible details: the rock-hewn tomb, the linen cloth, the heavy stone, the fragrant spices. The reader can imagine the place and time. Then things fall off the map.

Luke grounds the resurrection narrative in tangible details: the rock-hewn tomb, the linen cloth, the heavy stone, the fragrant spices. The reader can imagine the place and time. Then things fall off the map.

At the least-visited museum in Rome, a marble cross caught my attention. It depicts the Madonna and Child and the warm tangle of their intimacy.

This week, the National Review published a statement to Catholics opposing Donald Trump’s campaign for president. Authored by right-wing eminences George Weigel and Robert George, and cosigned by an impressive list of Catholic intellectuals and leaders, the document joins a body of anti-Trump literature that is coming into its own stentorian rhetorical conventions.

I appeared at a press conference several weeks ago at the state capitol building to support a legislator’s proposed bill to ban assault weapons. The legislator knew the bill wasn’t going anywhere in the house, but she expressed a desire to “start a conversation” about the role of weapons in our culture. She came with life-sized photos of the weapons in question, to ask whether these objects belong in homes.  Immediately after the press conference ended, a representative of the gun lobby swooped in to address the press.

The history of Palestinian Christian interpretation of the Old Testament reminds us of the nuanced, fragile nature of life in that region.

The Gulf states do not practice religious freedom in anything like the Western sense. Still, Christianity has secured a surprisingly strong foothold.

It was the evening of Super Tuesday, and my social media feeds were filling with expressions of shocked incredulity. “How is this possible?! Has the world gone completely mad?”

It’s a busy street, Walnut Street. I have to cross it to get to the Shalom Community Center.

Microscopes reveal countless worlds inside the world, from cells to tiny structures within cells diligently performing mysterious tasks.

Spent all day and deep into the evening Saturday at a wedding, studying the ways and means and manners by which people gently touch each other, and so communicate this and that and the other thing.

There are many reasons to deny Jesus, and we all have one. 

BLM is writing a new chapter in the history of black people's struggle for full equality. What are the implications for churches?