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We all have seasons when faith rings hollow and prayers seem tinny and meaningless. One such season for me came years ago as I was finishing seminary. At the time [...]

In my capacity as an editor for Baker Academic and Brazos Press, I annually attend the meetings of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature. These [...]

It is time to recognize that a new tradition has been added to Christmas. As surely as trees and lights and reindeer, December now brings Christian complaints about the secularization [...]

Christmas is the numbing season. There are the ceaseless rounds of Christmas parties, each requiring preparation of food and gift-buying, each surfeited with expectations of obligatory Christmas cheer. There is [...]

Despite all the attention given to remembering the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, little attention has been given to one conspicuous aspect--the event has no name. We don't refer [...]

Their stories are too little told--the stories of U.S. servicemen and women of devout religious faith who, often at great cost, stood up to protest the use of torture in [...]

This summer I reread Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison in Fortress Press's extraordinary new edition of his collected works. Letters and Papers remains almost endlessly suggestive and stimulating [...]

In the early 1990s my Grandma Adams, who had been a widow for several years, began to hang out with a widower named Bob. Grandma and Bob got along famously. [...]

The 1950s and 1960s are often cited as the golden age of television. Those were the days when comedians such as Groucho Marx and writers such as Rod Serling worked [...]

Adam is ... scattered throughout the globe. Set in one place, he fell and, as it were, broken small, he has filled the whole world. But the Divine Mercy gathered [...]

The earliest occurrence of what church historians call a jeremiad happened before there was a United States. In 1670, only 50 years after the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, [...]

My favorite theological joke is the old chestnut that asks: What do you call an agnostic dyslexic insomniac? Answer: Someone who lies awake at night wondering if there is a [...]

When my daughter became a teenager, she was invited to serve as an acolyte at our Episcopal church. I thought it would be a wonderful thing to do with her. [...]

Hardly a day passes without someone declaring the death of the book. Recently Lisa Miller of Newsweek viewed an electronic edition of the Bible that was replete with linked maps, [...]

Met any vampires lately? They are unavoidable in popular culture, from Stephanie Meyer's books Twilight and New Moon (both made into films) to television fare such as True Blood and [...]

Some intriguing tidbits of American history that I gleaned from recent reading: The lone judge to repent of his part in the Salem witch trials was also one of the [...]

Philosopher Bob Roberts here invades the counselor's office that has made its home in our popular culture and, indeed, in our churches. He declares that psychotherapies are alternative spiritualities. They [...]

Presents an excerpt from the book "Tortured Wonders: Christian Spirituality for People, Not Angels," by Rodney Clapp.

Discusses the issue on whether the phrase under God should be part of the Pledge of Allegiance. Reasons why the Elk Grove Unified School versus Newdow case deserves close attention; Opinion of Chief Justice William Rehnquist on the case; Arguments over the God-phrase in the pledge; Overview of henotheism.