Church
Bonhoeffer’s warning
In a 1939 essay, he compares the German and US churches—and asks what Christian freedom looks like when political pressure overwhelms theological clarity.
The pastor with no robe
Economic ideology can strip a vocation bare. The danger is especially acute for clergy of color.
The monk and the machine
How can we be better stewards of AI? Thomas Merton’s writing on technology can help.
Upside-down medicine
Jim O’Connell’s practice is built not on profit but on giving his patients—the unhoused of Boston—whatever time they need.
Church gossip and a pastor’s double life
I’m obligated to a high standard of confidentiality. I also find the stories on social media hard to resist.
A solution to evangelicalism’s PR problem?
Bonnie Kristian’s new book aims to unmonster the evangelical brand.
Global aid writ Lutheran
“We see hope in the small things,” says LWF World Service director Maria Immonen, “but also despair—because the solutions are right there, just out of our reach.”
The wounds of Catholic women
When the Vatican rejected a bid to allow laypeople to preach at mass, I felt again the toll of being dismissed by the church I call home.
September 6, Ordinary 23A (Matthew 18:15–20)
Jesus is not handing the church a timeless conflict resolution manual, however much we might long for one.
What Gen Z knows about the church
It’s not that they know nothing; it’s just that we don’t like to talk about what they know.
The common good in the age of AI
Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical shows how Catholic social teaching was built to outlast any single issue, including the newest ones.
The church is disappearing from the middle
Religious identity in the US now follows partisan affiliation, says demographer Ryan Burge. But congregations could still be places where that sorting gets undone.
A feast day for the whole church
“The Feast of Creation in Christ names our need to celebrate God’s saving work in creation,” says liturgical theologian Kimberly Belcher, “and to do so together.”
My dying best friend’s wedding
She collapsed on the sidewalk the night of my wedding. Eighteen months later, I stood by her hospital bed and offered to plan hers.
Black holes and supernovas
One kind of pastor collapses everything into themself. The other expands until they forget where they started.