Latest Articles

Here are some things I read recently but didn't get around to blogging about.

Each time Walter White gets away with something, I can't help cheering him on—while also shuddering at his depravity and my own complicity.

Neuroscientist Kenneth Hayworth is opposed to death, and he thinks he has a solution.

The other morning during my run I listened to Krista Tippett’s 2010 interview with Lord Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain.

The new Beach Boys record doesn't always work, but when it does it dials in the group's age of innocence, filtered through years of experience.

Ted Goins, president and CEO of Lutheran Services Carolinas, spends a lot of time focused on the Affordable Care Act’s regulations for providers of nursing care. But the health-care reform law also affects LSC is another way: as an employer.

Most people know only about the ACA's consumer-focused elements. Faith-based care providers are preparing for the law's other provisions as well.

The New York Times, the Harvard Gazette, The Huffington Post and other media outlets are breaking the news that Karen King, a scholar well known for her work on the phenomenon usually referred to as “Gnosticism,” has come into possession of and has been studying a Coptic papyrus fragment which is likely to be authentic, dates from around the 4th century, and has Jesus mention his wife.

Someone who tries to control through words has been trying to contact me for years. While he acts as though he is interested in saving women from violence, the way he does this is through distorting the truth, triangulation, manipulation and, lastly, by exerting the power of place: showing up to my congregation.



Sheldon Garon contends that Americans lack moral teaching on wealth, public policies that encourage saving, and a cultural ethos that nurtures thrift.

Working with producer John Abbey (who has played with Daniel Lanois and Ray Davies), Emily Hurd turns in a soulful, tender album that recalls the best of Lucinda Williams and Shawn Colvin.

The primary problem with American political culture is that almost all of our scrutiny goes to the human beings running for president.

If Moses is any example, the pastor’s yoke was never light. He wasn’t very far into his 40-year pastorate when he learned that his flock did not feel called to provide him with constant affirmation.