By the end of the final season, the series has shown the best and worst of our homeland—and spies with souls.
marriage
Is Jamie Quatro’s novel really about marital infidelity?
Maybe Fire Sermon is more fundamentally a parable about religion.
"I'm not afraid of marrying you," said the young groom. "I'm afraid of losing you."
The gig seemed fairly routine. Then I saw the parrots.
A missed flight, a cheap motel, and a mushy apple
This year, the Oscars honored three films that are poignant meditations on a person's agency in falling and staying in love.
What has made this experiment in marriage and ministry work, both for the congregation and for us?
No one from the outside can fully grasp the inner workings of any marriage. Even those inside sometimes find themselves lonely and strangers.
Saving Sex, by Amy DeRogatis
The old stereotype is that evangelicals are unable or unwilling to talk about sex. Lately, the reality is the opposite.
Did you hear about the for-profit wedding chapel owners in Idaho who are claiming a constitutional right (pdf) to refuse services to same-sex couples? From Marci Glass's entertaining post:
I hate to be the one to point this out to the Reverends Knapp, but they are not, in fact, pastors of a church. They own a wedding mill.
Marriage Markets, by June Carbone and Naomi Cahn
June Carbone and Naomi Cahn follow the life trajectories of two couples with much in common—but not marriage.
Divorce is a time when we most need our brothers and sisters in faith. Yet churches and clergy often ignore divorcing people.
Interfaith marriage: A reality check
Forty-two percent of U.S. marriages are interfaith. Naomi Schaefer-Riley convinced me that this is one of the biggest stories in religious life.
National Organization for Marriage board chair John C. Eastman recently called adoption a “second-best option” for children. He was speaking to the Associated Press about Chief Justice John Robert’s position on the rights of same-sex couples: “Certainly adoption in families headed, like Chief Roberts’ family is, by a heterosexual couple, is by far the second-best option.” The comment reveals less about adoptive families than about Eastman’s willingness to jettison religious tradition for political gain.
Nowhere has our callow politics asserted itself more thoughtlessly and noisily than in the politicization of personal or private life.