The great Rabbi Abraham Heschel, a spiritual genius, suffered a near-fatal heart attack in 1972. A friend came to visit him in his New York City apartment. Heschel said, “Sam, when I regained consciousness, my first feelings were not of…
The day the camel slipped through the eye of a needle … and the church did not
You may have read the remarkable story about the life of Charles Feeney, who recently died at 92 after having given away almost all of his $8 billion to the causes he believed in. At some point in his life,…
The stampede out of the church and the people of God and Christ outside its walls
“Stampede” may be an exaggerated word for the exodus out of the church in America, but no one can escape the reality. A date has been attached: 2070, the projected date when there will be more non-Christians than Christians in…
Connected sectarianism at the end of an age
In his seminal work After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre closes with an arresting and memorable paragraph : A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up…
Batman going home from the Barbie movie
My wife and I were driving home from the new blockbuster movie Barbie. It is a transformative journey, a sneakily subversive movie, a women’s anthem that may help us male types too. We began to muse about it, and fanciful…
The SBC and its sacrament of power
The Southern Baptist Convention continues on its crusade to rid Baptist churches of women in ordained leadership of any kind. I have looked with dismay at its inexorable path of patriarchal power and the denigration of women. So churches with…
The whole gospel of God for a church and nation in crisis
In a piercingly truthful and honest op-ed in The New York Times titled “What Christian Nationalism Has Done to My State And My Faith Is A Sin,” Susan Stubson, a prominent Wyoming Republican, for whom her conservative politics and her…
Hope in time of panic
We are living in a time of panic in America. How best can we respond to it as Christians? There is a racial panic, a church panic and a moral panic. These forms of panic are causing our nation to…
The broad way that leads to life
“Enter by the narrow gate,” Jesus said, “for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction. … For the gate is narrow and the the way is hard that leads to life.” Sometimes the gate…