Voices
Stephanie Saldaña
Strangers no more
The compassion of Iraqi and Syrian migrants I’ve met has transformed me—and challenged my vocabulary.
Phil Christman
An agnostic who out-Christianed the Christians
The 19th-century orator Robert Ingersoll denied God. But his answer to the question of human purpose strikes me as a pretty good one.
Peter Choi
Beginning where the gospels begin
The four books open in very different settings. Together they offer a map for locating ourselves in the world.
Rachel Mann
Asking “Who am I?” with Bonhoeffer
As I face unexpected early retirement, I tell myself that the answer is not yet known.
Benjamin J. Dueholm
A religion too wild to nationalize
After 250 years, US Christianity remains too diverse, splintered, and strange to be conscripted into any one political project.
Stephanie Perdew
American Decius
The Roman emperor staged a patriotic revival to win back the gods’ favor. The empire fell anyway.
Julian DeShazier
Does it matter what happened?
After years of listening to people tell their stories, I’ve begun to think that healing depends less on facts than on meaning.
Brian Bantum
At home with the Baptists
At my first gathering of Baptists in decades, I found something I didn’t know I was missing: testimony.
Melissa Florer-Bixler
What if mercy matters more than empathy?
Christian compassion begins not with imagining another person’s pain but with recognizing our shared dependence on grace.
Phil Christman
Other people’s greatness
I want to be like David Lynch. And my pastor. And my wife. But there aren’t enough hours in the day.
Stephanie Saldaña
Looking out the window in wartime
We still have power: We can choose whether to give violence the last word.
Brian Bantum
Saved by bad art
As AI continues to proliferate, I’ve been inviting my students to create something—anything.
Kelly Brown Douglas
A house divided and indecent
The question is no longer just whether we can resolve our differences. It’s whether we still recognize one another’s basic humanity.
Stephanie Perdew
Reading scripture with Augustine
The bishop of Hippo isn’t just for JD Vance and Mike Johnson—and Bible studies aren’t just for evangelicals.
Rachel Mann
Holy uprising
I’ve long seen the ascension story as an absurdity. John Donne helps me see it as a revolution.
Peter Choi
The room next door to faith
I am learning that questioning religion is not the same as abandoning it.
Julian DeShazier
In the valley of echoes
People often respond not to the person in front of them but to reverberations from the past.
Melissa Florer-Bixler
Has worship become a luxury good?
As working-class stability erodes, congregations are quietly remaking themselves in the image of the middle class.
Rachel Mann
The great and terrible meaning of war
War is symbolic of humanity’s failure to live in the peaceable kingdom. Yet where there are humans there will always be a search for meaning.