Voices
Julian DeShazier
Why I came back to the lectionary
My job as a preacher isn’t to change the game. It’s to run the plays well.
Heidi Neumark
Bearing the scars
Years ago, at a barbecue in Argentina, I realized I was the only person present who wasn’t a survivor of torture.
Brian Bantum
Can inclusive churches grow and thrive?
When my spouse’s church became more affirming, the major givers left.
Philip Jenkins
William Guthrie’s weird Christianity
The rector of St. Mark’s in-the-Bowery brought the church into relationship with the Greenwich Village avant-garde of the 1920s.
Alejandra Oliva
Annie Dillard in spring
Each March, I find my thoughts returning to Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
Jonathan Tran
Days of wanting
My family didn’t want to go to America at all; we left Vietnam on pain of death.
Yolanda Pierce
Showing up for church when I don’t want to
When I show up, God shows up—although not always in the sermon.
Rachel Mann
Speaking of death
Christians have an opportunity to eschew euphemisms and talk honestly about mortality.
Melissa Florer-Bixler
Spending Lent with people in recovery
In the company of church members in recovery from addiction, I’m feeling more open to the doctrine of original sin.
Samuel Wells
Faith, hope, love, and AI
Our different responses to artificial intelligence point to different stories—and different Christian virtues.
Rachel Mann
Holy attachments
During the pandemic, I went six months without touching another human being. I felt starved.
Heidi Neumark
The bones in God’s garden
Will my daffodil bulbs overcome their trauma and rise up despite the odds? Will we?
Debie Thomas
Metaphors for the spiritual life
I have been an onion peeler and an excavator. I hope God will form me into a bridge.
Philip Jenkins
A landscape of lost denominations
In the US, church foundation stones tell a mostly forgotten story of religious and ethnic history.
Brian Bantum
The patron saint of in-between things
Having grown up as a Black-mixed kid, I can relate to Moses’ upbringing as not quite Hebrew and not quite Egyptian.
Melissa Florer-Bixler
Sharing the burden of language disorientation
At my church, some of us are learning Spanish. Others are learning English.
Alejandra Oliva
Caught up in the sweep of history
When I am troubled by the times in which we live, I turn to Óscar Romero.
Melissa Florer-Bixler
Nature is not an escape
To understand this, I had to stop reading John Muir and turn to the nature writing of the Harlem Renaissance.
Isaac S. Villegas
Harmful people with helpful ideas
I still read Luther, Calvin, and de Beauvoir. But John Howard Yoder’s sexual abuse has made me rethink my mindset.