By J. Brent Walker The United States’ habit of Christmas craziness began, just like reminders of the holiday season itself, early this year. You know what I mean — the perennial cry that someone or some group (usually one’s ideological…
Barack Obama, peace and justice
By Jim Denison On Dec. 10, President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. In his speech the president said, “I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility. It is an award that speaks to our highest…
Is ‘Climategate’ a crisis of faith?
By Steven D. Martin The theft and publication of thousands of e-mail messages from scientists in the Climatic Research Unit at England’s University of East Anglia will undoubtedly affect the outcome of the U.N. climate talks — taking place in…
Migration as mission
By David F. D’Amico Baptist missiologist Samuel Escobar, author of The New Global Mission, contends that immigration in the 21st century can become a missions challenge for Christians in the developed world. He suggests that churches in the United States…
Socialism’s not the danger; corporatism is
By David Sanders “I think Obamanomics — no one is actually sure yet,” Zanny Minton Beddoes, the economics editor of The Economist magazine, explained as she struggled to define President Obama’s economic policies in a recent speech to the World…
Baptists and the role of faith in public policy
By Marv Knox The tension between Christian compassion and the duties of citizenship — particularly the responsibilities of public officials — has been in the news lately. Maurice Clemmons was free to walk into a Lakewood, Wash., coffee shop and…
In pre-Copenhagen rally, did we ‘Wave’ cynicism good-bye?
By Jonathan Langley An estimated 40,000 people (all of whom had been asked to wear blue clothing and paint their hands blue) gathered at noon on Dec. 5 in Grosvenor Square, in the heart London, for what had been billed…
Bearing a Christian witness as the war expands
By David Gushee I have decided that it is not my place as one offering Christian moral witness to endorse any nation’s wars, including my own. This is a change for me. In previous times I have weighed in either…
Hope and Advent’s apocalyptic readings
By Molly T. Marshall As I have been reading Time and Newsweek and The New York Times this past week, I have noticed a trend as writers seek to describe the decade that is quickly winding down. Their words are…