Stub

Local ways are rarely senseless or stupid. It's just that a new pastor likely doesn't yet understand them as the locals do.

The rise of megachurches has created a larger public role for some churches—even as it has signaled the loosening hold of organized religion.

If the church is the bride of Christ, then Jesus is married to both Rachel and Leah—to the church he wants, and to the church he has to take.

The biological concept of convergence lends credence to a Christian view of providence—and fits with a scriptural account of a story-shaped world.

America is living stormy Monday while the pulpit is preaching happy Sunday. Can we recover a blues sensibility?

A recent Templeton Foundation program sought to cultivate local conversation on science and faith. We asked some pastors to describe their experience.

I loved writing Wearing God in part because it allowed me to rove around archives from more or less every century of the Christian past. The biblical images for God that most (American?) churches today largely ignore were decidedly not ignored in earlier eras.

There has been a broad and dramatic shift toward more abortion restrictions in the United States. This will almost certainly continue.

George Steiner said that "the translator invades, extracts, and brings home." In this remarkable volume, Everett Fox does all of this.

What goes on in the mind of a leader who tires of building consensus and just strives to get things done?

Stephen Jay Gould regarded science and religion as addressing different kinds of questions. Owen Gingerich goes a step farther with a more nuanced approach.

A report released today by the Children’s Defense Fund details how the U.S. could reduce child poverty by 60 percent.

Specific targets are important in anti-poverty work, and this is an ambitious one (though less ambitious than the report’s title, Ending Child Poverty Now). CDF’s policy proposals include a larger Earned Income Tax Credit and (not or) a higher minimum wage, along with expanded housing subsidies, child care subsidies, and food stamps. Add some more generous rules for tax credit refunds and child support recipients’ federal benefits—along with a new subsidized jobs program—and the whole thing starts to sound pretty expensive.

In the wake of Michael Brown's shooting by Darren Wilson and the subsequent protests in Ferguson, Lauryn Hill posted a song called "Black Rage."

How would I get to nursing homes, or respond to emergencies? What would I do when it snowed? I hoped the answers would come as I pedaled.

I've spent the last few months in guilty inactivity. I've discovered that the world doesn't seem to need me to improve it.

“Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” Most of us can identify with that request. It’s only fair: each member should receive their own portion of a family’s wealth when the time comes to divide it. 

But Jesus doesn’t seem to care about fairness.

Multitasking is marked by a sustained sense of urgency in a world mediated by communication devices. Puttering is something different.

There's a broad consensus that peace between the Israelis and Palestinians depends on a two-state solution. So why doesn't it happen?

The runaway slave narratives compiled by Devon Carbado and Donald Weise are as moving as any story by Suzanne Collins or J.R.R. Tolkien.

Halloween's tradition of shadowy characters makes it as good a time as any to think on the reality of evil, sin and death that besets us.