Latest Articles

A few nights ago we ate ratatouille. We sweated the onions over a low heat for 45 minutes. We added basil, garlic, and Italian parsley—all fresh from our garden here in New Zealand. Over time, we added the vegetables: pepper, eggplant, courgette, tomato. Finally, we mixed cheese and bread crumbs together. The eggplant grew from seed (heirloom from Diggers Club) in the garden. In the growing, I’ve been challenged about leadership.

Some classic works on the origins of modernity give pride of place to Calvinism. D. G. Hart will have none of it.

This Colossians reading is one of those distilled, cryptic passages that draws us into so much more than we can imagine. Such verses expand our capacity to wonder and give praise. They invite us into God’s mystery.

These Gospel stories can seem so familiar. But sit with the disciples in the little wooden boat, and Jesus' power will render you speechless.

Reading Edwidge Danticat’s novel Claire of the Sea Light is like swimming through a gentle tide in a body of water known for riptides. The feeling that something invisible, fierce, and irreparable is just under the surface never quite leaves the corner of the reader’s mind.  The story traces relational ties in Ville Rose, a small coastal village town in Haiti.

Looks like Vox is off to a pretty good start. Ezra Klein & Co.'s news & politics vertical is poised to do even more than Klein's past work already has to expand serious discussion of public policy, to take it outside the bubble of people who come to the conversation with specialized knowledge. Though if Matthew Yglesias's first post is any indication, Vox may make a different time-honored mistake of national political journalism: taking for granted that D.C. is the center of the universe, and that this universe exists entirely along the Eastern Seaboard.

Our hunger is for words that evoke our deepest emotions, that name the wilderness in which we live—but not alone.

A few years ago, while wandering through the Old City of Jerusalem, I stumbled upon a spray-painted sign on the side of a small factory building. It called out in English: “We need peace.” It seemed to me like a modern-day cry of “hosanna” coming from the people of Jerusalem.

And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. Why?

Since 2000, nearly 500,000 ELCA members have left to form two new bodies. These churches are organizing themselves along new patterns.

My article in the March 19 issue tells the story of Larry Engel and Mike Breininger, two pastors in Richland County, Wisconsin, who were able to bridge a longstanding impasse between conservative and liberal pastors by beginning a conversation about their own theological and political differences. The result? A friendship between two pastors, cooperation among area pastors, and a jumpstart to initiating and sustaining needed community services. 

It's often said that in a tolerance-obsessed culture, everything is tolerated—except intolerance. Actually, this gets said a lot more often than perhaps it should, because being intolerant is not the same sort of thing as being black or female or gay or Muslim. Tolerating people is more fundamental than tolerating their ideas. Yet tolerating ideas matters, too.

I once presented Africa as a region of extreme poverty, but we now have to take account of economic development. We can only begin to outline the religious consequences.

A growing number of UMC clergy are performing same-sex weddings in open defiance of the Book of Discipline. What happens next?