Nuns have always been popular figures in the cultural imagination. Yet not since the era of Fräulein Maria and the von Trapps have we seen a pop-culture Nunnaissance like the one taking place right now.
I’m a pastor with depression. For years I thought I had to hide it.
Depression lies to me. It is relentless. It tells me I will always feel this way, that I’m not deserving of help, that I am a burden, a waste, that my life is thoroughly hopeless.
Who’s more cynically using religion: Trump or his Religious Right boosters?
The Religious Right’s mixed reaction to last week’s highly staged Rose Garden signing of an executive order on religious liberty might be a useful gauge of leaders’ level of cynicism—or their willingness to play along with Trump’s own cynical use…
Evangelicals and the Supreme Court
A few years ago a commentator observed that while we evangelicals have a lot to say about judicial decisions, when it comes to choosing justices who have conservative religious views, the nod typically goes to Catholics because evangelicals lack the requisite…
The rise of café churches in South Korea
How corruption scandals are driving young Christians away from megachurches and conservative politics.
Sanctuary cities are good for all the people who live there
Turning local police into ICE agents makes everyone less safe.
A monument to Jesus in the city of Mao
Sweeping heavenward like an enormous glass-and-metal ski jump, a new Protestant church dominates the crumbled earth, freshly planted trees and unfinished water features of a suburban park under construction in Changsha, China.
Trump is encouraging pastors to push politics. Here’s how that’s gotten them in trouble before
The Johnson Amendment has perhaps caused the greatest division among groups historians say were probably not Lyndon B. Johnson’s prime target: houses of worship and religious leaders.
Clergy members aren’t being persecuted for their politics
Over the past half-century since the Johnson Amendment became law, a grand total of just one church has lost its special tax status — and that after an episode of blatant electioneering.
He’s 98 and retired from the pulpit. Will there be a next Billy Graham?
Ask Graham biographers and religion scholars today who will be the next Billy Graham, here’s their answer: Nobody.
Trump’s religious liberty order slammed as ‘pretty much nothing’
Trump’s gesture toward his religious base appeared to falter as a matter of policy, and perhaps as politics: Social conservatives who had been expecting more expressed disappointment, and the order itself seems unlikely to have much impact on current law.
Baylor frat party sparks protest
A Baylor University fraternity hosted a racist “Mexican-themed” party on Saturday night, prompting a Sunday afternoon school statement condemning the event and a vociferous student protest.