Frederick Buechner The world’s terrible fragility Much of the rest of the day I lay there on my back watching the endless TV replays of the unspeakably beautiful September morning with the plane, golden in the…
Robert P. Jones Underneath the glossy, self-congratulatory histories This book puts forward a simple proposition: it is time - indeed, well beyond time - for white Christians in the United States to reckon with the racism of our…
Lenny Duncan The roots of black Lutheranism in America Jehu would eventually be sent to Philadelphia to be a missionary to the black community there. He founded St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Center City Philadelphia. He bought the land…
Leigh Finke A choice? Some people remain convinced that being queer is a choice, an anomaly, a problem to be solved. But nothing could be further from the truth. Some people argue that queerness…
Kerry Connelly America is good Americans are good. In his July 2019 newsletter to his followers, evangelical leader James Dobson described a visit to the southern border of the United States during what can only…
Leigh Finke What About Biology? You’ve probably heard all of the arguments: There are two biological genders, two sexes for the purpose of reproduction. You’re either XX or XY - there aren’t any other options.…
Kerry Connelly Implied hierarchy Let’s take the binary of white/nonwhite - you know, as a totally random example. Whether you’re ready to admit it yet or not, there’s a hierarchy built in there. Everything…
Maya Angelou To Tell the Truth My mother, Vivian Baxter, warned me often not to believe that people really want the truth when they ask, “How are you?” She said that question was asked around…
Barbara Brown Taylor There is a place where human knowing runs out “We know,” Nicodemus says to Jesus when he first comes into the room. “You do not know,” Jesus says to Nicodemus right before he leaves. If you interpret this as…
Rachel Held Evans Rachel Held Evans’ father on his daughter’s final days and the ongoing impact of her life ‘I was her dad, and was proud to be so. I didn’t try to put the brakes on Rachel. Controversial issues were hers to play out,’ Peter Held tells RNS…
Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons Un-Christlike Conservativism I’ve traveled around the country working at the intersection of progressive politics and religion for the past decade and met countless activists bogged down by un-Christlike conservativism prevailing in our…
Frederick Buechner A Crazy, Holy Grace A crazy, holy grace I have called it. Crazy because whoever could have predicted it? Who can ever foresee the crazy how and when and where of a grace that…
Frederick Buechner With Great Laughter by Frederick Buechner Part of the farce was that for the first time in my life that year in New York, I started going to church regularly, and what was…
Madeleine L'Engle Christian art? Christian art? Art is art; painting is painting; music is music; a story is a story. If it’s bad art, it’s bad religion, no matter how pious the subject. If…
Religion News Service For white Christians, racial justice starts with telling the truth by Robert P. Jones, on Religion News Service Perhaps the biggest obstacle to white Christians’ full participation in the movement for racial equality is an unshakable commitment to our own…
Diana Butler Bass Jesus gives water, and he is water. SCRIPTURE: If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink,” you would have asked him, and he would have…
Kathleen Norris A Prayer to Eve Mother of fictions and of irony help us to laugh. Mother of science and the critical method, keep us humble. Muse of listeners, hope of interpreters inspire us to act.…
Barbara Brown Taylor Love The Stranger However you define the problematic present-day stranger—the religious stranger, the cultural stranger, the transgendered stranger, the homeless stranger—scripture’s wildly impractical solution is to love the stranger as the self. You…
Uncategorized Something This Protestant Learned from a Jew About Reading the Bible: A Story by Pete Enns https://peteenns.com/something-this-protestant-learned-from-a-jew-about-reading-the-bible-a-story/
Diana Butler Bass How do you experience gratitude when feelings are elusive? How do you experience gratitude when feelings are elusive? Emotions are random things. Love, sadness, joy, fear. Very few are predictable, and most move like winds through our lives. They…
Kathleen Norris Stomach My stomach is of many minds, it believes everything it eats. My eschatological stomach, a fundamentalist of sorts, grows intent at drawing blood from surfaces of things: ice-cold fingers touch…
