Features
The faith of an empire
Religious leaders supplied the motives for American expansionism—along with the means and the opportunity.
The future of dying?
Physician-assisted suicide is morally complex. For Christians, it requires wrestling theologically with concepts like suffering, autonomy, and dignity.
The social failure behind assisted suicide
Why are people in pain? Why are their illnesses incurable? Neither advocates nor opponents of PAS tend to ask these questions.
Afro-pessimism and Christian hope
Reading Saidiya Hartman alongside Vincent Lloyd has helped me get through the night.
Can this far-right Christian militia de-radicalize?
The Bratstvo Battalion was once known for its antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. Now it’s fighting alongside diverse Ukrainians to save the country from Russia.
Escape to Mars?
The ultrarich are planning their exit from a dying planet. Christian apocalyptic theology has a different ending in mind.
Dorothy Day never spoke of her abortion
A century later, I refuse to stay quiet about mine—despite the Catholic Worker movement’s tradition of silence.
Augustine gave me a language for staying alive
The Korean concept of hwa-yang-yeon-hwa has helped me embody the theologian’s idea of the beata vita.
The church’s crisis of vocational theology
What would Frederick Buechner say about the world’s persistent hunger for gladless jobs?
A betrayal of refuge
In immigrant congregations, deportation anxiety can silence survivors and shield abusers.
Whose Christian nationalism?
If political power were distributed based on a census of the founding era, the United States would be run by Episcopalians and Congregationalists.
Music during wartime
David Byrne reminds me that however bleak things seem, singing and dancing together are morally serious acts.
What does AI reveal about creation and vocation?
In the biblical imagination, God’s words bring the world into existence by command. Human speech accomplishes something different.
Donald McGavran’s complicated legacy
The founder of the church growth movement was full to bursting with intercultural adaptation and anti-racist struggle. How did he become the darling of White segregationist Christians?
The scars of a flourishing human
Many people assume that disability is bad for a person’s well-being. But historically we haven’t been very good at determining what’s bad for someone.
Natural death and Christian love
The most religious people are also statistically the most likely to place their faith in artificial life support. Why?
When drug lords get saved
In Rio de Janeiro, they don’t necessarily turn away from sin.
The Louisiana Standard Version
There are many problems with the Ten Commandments laws states are passing. One is the specific text they require schools to post.
Michael Jackson and the boys we don’t talk about
We reached consensus on Epstein and Cosby. Why are we buying tickets to see Michael?
What churches don’t remember
Poet Marilyn Nelson strips away nostalgia to reveal a congregation shaped as much by slavery, doubt, and culture as by faith.