Latest Articles
Is it missing the point to take offense at Sarah Palin's reference to baptism?
So, Sarah Palin said this thing the other day about waterboarding and baptism. I wouldn’t bother bringing it up just to say that I, like so many others, find this disgusting.
What’s more interesting to me is the diversity of people who are similarly appalled.
REPORT: State Department should double list of worst religious freedom offenders
c. 2014 Religion News Service...
Is the church helping? Christians and the conflict in South Sudan
Churches helped usher in a new era of South Sudanese politics. As the conflict continues, leaders are again seeking to be peacemakers and prophets.
Prisoners and the least of these in American Protestantism
American evangelicals and mainliners often seem worlds apart when it comes to engagement with social issues. Take prisons as a case in point. The rhetoric diverges along the lines that one might expect: mainliners rail against the American mass incarceration system, the new Jim Crow that locks away minorities and the poor and is sustained by in-prison private labor and for-profit facilities. They want to fight this sinful system through activism (protests and petitions), academia (lectures and scholarly books), and artistic endeavors (photo essays and poetry).
Evangelicals seek inmate conversion.
Never Pray Again
In the early days of blogging, when it seemed like a mere handful of people were conversing on-line, I encountered Doug Hagler, Aric Clark, and Nick Larson (also known as Two Friars and a Fool)....
Why you come to church
I don't know why you come to church on a particular Sunday, or why you don't. Sometimes you show up; sometimes you don't. When you don't, maybe it's because you are sick or out of town or your alarm clock didn't go off or you just can't bear to be in a room with those particular people on this particular day. Maybe you are caught between wanting your kids to experience God and a faith community, and the reality of what it's really like to be a part of a faith community.
Gratitude, by Peter J. Leithart
Peter Leithart’s book can be seen as one long act of ingratitude. Sometimes, he seems to be saying it is more blessed to reject than to receive.
Paging God, by Wendy Cadge
Wendy Cadge asks, What happens to religion when hospitals, many of them founded by religious groups, are secularized or otherwise constrained to serve patients beyond their founding communities?
One more time, evangelicals head to Hill on immigration reform
c. 2014 Religion News Service...
Sunday, May 11, 2014: Acts 2:42-47
Luke’s report of the church’s economic sharing interrupts our reading of what might otherwise be an easy passage.
The contemplative mask
I feel dread when my phone rings these days. This presents a bit of a problem, because I make my living by taking peoples’ calls. The same goes for e-mail....
Why Sarah Palin is right about baptism by waterboarding
In a speech now heard ’round the Christian world, Sarah Palin said at an NRA rally that “waterboarding is how we’d baptize terrorists” if she were president.
Christians were up in arms about the apparent blasphemy of the statement, shocked that she would sacrilegiously connect waterboarding with the Christian sacrament of baptism.
Guidelines for hosting a speaker
I used to roll my eyes at the conference speaker divas who had a whole list of demands, until I needed to develop a few of my own guidelines....
Book of Hours, by Kevin Young
The sudden death of a parent and years of smoldering grief that follow, the breathless anticipation of the birth of a child and years of awkward wonder that follow—these experiences are among the s...