Voices
Brian Bantum
God of breath and gravity
“Who is God?” Today, God is the rising and falling of my chest.
Isaac S. Villegas
Emotional communism
More than ever, we need the common life we can create for each other, a shared life for the benefit of all.
Kelly Brown Douglas
What does it mean to be a Christian in these times?
We have a cross at the center of our faith, and we need to start acting like it.
Rachel Mann
What can the church offer trans people right now?
Baptism and Eucharist should rework all of our ideas about identity.
Samuel Wells
Forerunners like John
Not everyone who makes a difference in the world gets the credit—or seeks it.
Melissa Florer-Bixler
Church on the run
If I want kinship with my Anabaptist ancestors, I know where to look: in prison.
Phil Christman
Please, tell me what it says in the original Greek
Why are clergy so embarrassed to know things their job requires them to know?
Alejandra Oliva
My word for 2024 was monasticism
One highlight of the year was a busy week in a cabin with three friends and a dog.
Stephanie Perdew
My protector was not on the ballot this fall
I look to the hills, not to a politician.
Julian DeShazier
After every election, I turn to Tolstoy
His challenges to the left and right alike are devastating and timely.
Heidi Neumark
Advent in the squatters’ camp
As a human rights worker during Argentina’s Dirty War, I learned to read the signs.
Jonathan Tran
Keep swinging for the fences
My decades of church life have been full of the stuff one might expect from a place that promises God and only sometimes delivers.
Isaac S. Villegas
Divine silence
A Quaker colleague taught me how stillness exercises agency, how it acts upon worshipers.
Debie Thomas
Ancestral blessings
I attended a talk by a pastor who begins services by asking, “Who do you bring into worship with you?”
Brian Bantum
Stretched between life’s verses
The future is scary: we simply don’t know, and it flies toward us anyway.
Yolanda Pierce
Lessons from the land of lake effect snow
Life can be as unpredictable as the weather in upstate New York. But God’s steadfast love endures forever.
Samuel Wells
Mourning prayer
The church’s old cork board reminded me that our heartbroken cries go directly to God.
Heidi Neumark
Conspiracies of goodness
When I fear a dystopian future, I hold on to stories of everyday resistance.