We gave our readers a one-word writing prompt: “indulgence.”
Jewish history tells me to be both compassionate and alert. When it comes to the Palestinian conflict, I don't know how to do both at once.
The Red Sea, the baptistery, and the birth canal
Antiblackness is outrageous, but it does not have the last word.
All knowledge is communal, but that's easy to forget.
Making work a prerequisite for benefits is costly, inefficient, and ineffective.
A church on my street fed food-insecure kids while schools were closed. The work of justice flowed outward from the table.
It's not just disaffection with particular state churches. People's religious orientation itself is gone.
The woman's presence in a crowd is an act of civil disobedience.
What do we miss when we seclude ourselves on safe shores of sameness?
The questions private prisons raise
Is private management more efficient? Is it wrong to profit from punishment? Is the whole idea immoral in concept?
A Christian apologist's memoir of suffering
Telling the story of his wife's tragic illness, Douglas Groothuis combines lament with grace-filled love.
Will the real fundamentalists please stand up?
What counts as fundamentalism? David Harrington Watt and Sathianathan Clarke give contrasting answers.
Is Jamie Quatro’s novel really about marital infidelity?
Maybe Fire Sermon is more fundamentally a parable about religion.
Zadie Smith leaves no cultural stone unturned
Smith's collection of essays considers the self as an improvised response to language and the world.
The White House said agencies and executive departments that do not have a faith-based office will have a designated liaison to the new initiative.
A clergy group formed supporting a rabbi in the ski resort town of Whitefish, where white supremacist groups targeted her and other local Jewish people.
A coalition of Muslim students highlighting the Jewish roots in Moroccan culture, and an evangelical pastor and imam creating a nationwide grassroots network are among those partnering against extremism.
Israel's government has offered financial incentives for thousands of asylum seekers to leave the country voluntarily—threatening to detain or deport them if they didn't.
The bishops recommended removing prohibitions on same-sex marriage and LGBT clergy in the global denomination's Book of Discipline—while allowing new regional rules.
With fewer people carrying cash, churches plan to use special card readers for collecting fees and the offering.
The author of The Once and Future Church was part of the shift to looking at congregations in their contexts—not just the church in general.
Patricia A. Davenport and Viviane Thomas-Breitfeld will each lead a regional body in the predominantly white mainline Protestant denomination.