Commentaries

By Christopher Robertson Just the other day I made an unexpected friend. We began our conversation with the usual questions – “So, where are you from? What do you do?” We were only two questions in when my new friend…

By Elizabeth Evans Hagan I got a thank-you e-mail the other day from one of my friends who does not regularly attend church. She signed the message: “Love, your favorite heretic.” This is a friend with whom I often talk…

By David Breckenridge For a lot of us, Christmas is about home. It’s about going home, if home is elsewhere. Its about others coming home, if home is here. It’s about reconnecting with those to whom we are connected —…

By Ken Sehested We have a problem. On the one hand, gift-giving is not only fun but is also a reflection of our most cherished convictions. Maybe the deepest current of Scripture is God’s gift-giving character, with the parallel notion…

By David Gushee Since the origin of Christian social ethics in the late 19th century as an Anglo-American academic-ecclesial discipline, economic problems have been at the center of our profession’s concerns. Christian ethics was born during the days in which…

By Barry Howard In the close-knit rural church of my upbringing, we didn’t observe Advent. Not by that name, anyway. We naively made a huge leap from Thanksgiving to Christmas. The important liturgical dates on our church calendar other than…

By David Wilkinson Americans’ obsession with celebrities seems inexhaustible. The ubiquity of the Internet and the rise of social media have added a whole new dimension to this social phenomenon. Today, one can read about, watch and “follow” a favorite…

By R. Kevin Johnson My friend Ray is a pastor who tells a story about an encounter he had with a visitor to his church office. The man started with, “Pastor, I need your help. I think I’ve made a…