When Christians offend Christians Several years ago I was speaking at a large weekend annual conference on the East Coast, leading several breakout sessions…
Church centered, not church occupied
Church centered, not church occupied I don’t want to be misunderstood here. I am not saying that church membership is optional for the Christian,…
Postville I: Undocumented Workers, Immigration & Justice.
Community / Faith / Pluralistic World
Everything changed for Postville on a morning in May. At 10 a.m., immigration agents descended en masse upon the tiny Iowa town. They arrived…
Bored By Life, By God
Culture / Ordinary Life / Spirituality
I’ve been thinking about what we Christians experience when we read Scripture. On the one hand, we believe it to be God’s revelation of…
Glimmers of Light
If we have eyes to see, not all is darkness in this broken world. “Now and then, in some way or another,” Roy Anker…
What Would Jesus Value?
Discernment / Scripture / Spirituality / The Skill
Surveys reveal there is apparently a marked disparity between the number of people—especially among males—who claim to believe in Christianity and the number who…
The Wonderful Freedom to Fail
Faith / Ordinary Life / Visual Art
Speaking at the 2009 Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA) conference allowed me to attend some fascinating presentations. New York artist Makoto Fujimura, for…
Engaging New Atheists (2): Three Consolations on Reading Dawkins
Discernment / Faith / Pluralistic World
Editor’s introduction When the New Atheists began producing books that quickly became bestsellers, I was interested to listen to what they were saying. I…
Questions from an Athiest
Faith / Pluralistic World / Spirituality
One of the selections Christopher Hitchens includes in his The Portable Atheist is from A Farewell to God by Charles Templeton. In it, Templeton…
Missions in a Risk-Averse Age
At times I've wondered whether the advent of bike-safety helmets for children will mark the beginning of the end of the modern missionary movement.…