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I have neither given or received, nor have I tolerated others' use of unauthorized aid. At the university where I teach part time, students write this honor code statement on every exam, essay and homework submission. It is up to the instructor to identify what constitutes authorized aid for each assignment or exam. When Luke set out to write his “orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us,” there seems to have been no concept of unauthorized aid.

I turned the knob of the radio until I could hear the public station. It was a local program, a prolonged piece on a mother talking about the fear and anticipation of the "shavee." I admit. I rolled my eyes.

A recent morning’s Bible reading was a bit of an unexpected one: Hosea 14. I suspect I am not alone in saying that I don’t tend to spend a lot of time in Hosea for devotional reading.

New today from the Century: Amy Frykholm interviews Susan Crawford Sullivan, Ed Blum reviews Emily Raboteau, more.

Decision making may have less to do with rational assessment than perceived risk. Is this why even well-reasoned church initiatives don't always succeed?

"I know it’s a lurid metaphor, but I taught my daughter the preschool block precursor of don’t 'get raped' and this child, Boy #1, did not learn the preschool equivalent of 'don’t rape.'"

In The Sea and the Mirror, W.H. Auden audaciously wrote new poems in the voices of each character in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, all set after the action of the play concludes. The result is a work both wonderfully reverent and plainly modern—you might even call it modern in its reverence. I would have hoped that anyone presuming to put out a book called A New New Testament would borrow Auden’s approach and give us a genuine literary and theological invention.

It’s farm bill season again. That’s right: time for our divided government to get together and reauthorize the five-year omnibus bill that affects everyone who grows, sells or eats food—or at least to go through the motions for a while before punting again like last year.

New today from the Century: Kathryn Reklis on Arrested Development, Walter Brueggemann on Lance Pape, more.

Arrested Development is back, and family dysfunction is on display. But family may also be the characters' chance to break free from paralyzing narcissism.

Graduation season reminds me that you can do a whole lot worse than give your heart to a college.

"We aren't the first people to experience God as the slice and the stitches at the exact same time. The paradox is ancient. Jesus embodied it."