There's a humorous, apocryphal story about a man standing by a river. On the opposite bank, a woman calls out, "How do I get to the other side of the river?" The man replies, "YOU A...
In 2014, researchers at Northwestern University, Boston College, and the University of Melbourne published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , a prestigious academ...
Disagreement is refreshing when two men lovingly desire to compare their views to find out truth. Controversy is wretched when it is only an attempt to prove another wrong. Religious controversy does ...
I grew up near Washington D.C. surrounded by politics…I helped with the campaign of a friend’s father as he ran for state office, watched our friendly county supervisor become a US congressman, and le...
Matthew 5:10-12, Luke 6:22-23, Luke 12:51-53, Galatians 6:9, Galatians 1:10, Proverbs 29:25
Jane Addams (1860–1935), a leading American social reformer, was a dedicated advocate for racial equality, women’s suffrage, and pacifism. In 1931, she was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1900,...
It seems that every four years, the American people come through another exhausting political season. No matter who “wins,” there are feelings of frustration and disgust on all sides as we observe the...
I once had the opportunity to speak briefly to a large Mormon audience at the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City. I told them that I feel badly about the fact that we evangelicals often tell Mormons what th...
1 Samuel 24:10-12, Proverbs 16:8, Romans 12:17-18, Psalm 72:1-4, Micah 6:8, Matthew 5:13-16
When in conflict we should demonstrate that our public witness is more important than winning a political battle. This means that if our side has to do something unloving or corrupt to win, then it’s ...
The last 80 years of American politics have unfortunately seen a dramatic increase in political polarization. One reporter likened the relationship between Republicans and Democrats to the famous Shak...
Religion is not, at the outset, a refuge of grace and mercy for the despondent and desperate, an enchanted stream for crushed spirits, but a raging clamorous torrent of man’s consciousness with all it...
I see the confusion of politics and religion as one of the greatest barriers to grace. C. S. Lewis observed that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with p...
Politics draws lines between people; in contrast, Jesus’ love cuts across those lines and dispenses grace. That does not mean, of course, that Christians should not involve themselves in politics. It ...
Gracious God, you have placed us in a culture that seems more and more filled with politics. Forgive us for every time we respond to these politics with decisions that do not honor Christ. Pardon us f...
More often than not, park-it-at-the-door thinking [about religious faith] has less to do with hostility to faith than with the avoidance of risk, for many employer’s fear that any hint of religion is ...
Leviticus 25:10-17, Deuteronomy 15:7-11, Amos 5:11-15, James 82:, Luke 4:18-19
There is no social evil, no form of injustice whether of the feudal or the capitalist order which has not been sanctified in some way or other by religious sentiment and thereby rendered more impervio...
Galatians 5:14, Matthew 12:1-8, John 4:1-26, James 1:27, 1 John 4:20-21, Matthew 23:23, Mark 12:30-31
The only clear line I draw these days is this: when my religion tries to come between me and my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor…Jesus never commanded me to love my religion.
On April 12, 1963, eight clergy—two Methodist bishops, two Episcopal bishops, one Roman Catholic Bishop, a Rabbi, a Presbyterian, and a Baptist—wrote a letter addressed to the citizens of Alabama. Thi...
Exodus 5:1–2, 1 Kings 18:21–39, Daniel 3:16–18, Matthew 5:14–16, Acts 4:19–20, Psalm 2:1–2, 10–12
Most secularists are too politically savvy to attack religion directly or to debunk it as false. So what do they do? They consign religion to the value sphere—which takes it out of the realm of true a...
Though American Christians do have genuine opponents in the public square and in elite institutions, they have often been their own worst enemies, making disastrous political compromises and looking t...
There can never be any real opposition between religion and science; for the one is the complement of the other. Every serious and reflective person realizes, I think, that the religious element in hi...
John 14:6, Isaiah 55:8-9, Matthew 9:10-13, John 18:36, Luke 19:1-10
With a certain oversimplification we can trace easily enough the three options open to Jews in Jesus’ day. … First, the quietist and ultimately dualist option, taken by the writers of the Dead Sea Scr...
Fear and control are the basis for all human religions. From this common beginning the paths diverge dramatically, splinter, multiply, and finally terminate in different places. But each one is an att...
If “evolution” is…elevated to the status of a world-view of the way things are, then there is direct conflict with biblical faith. But if “evolution” remains at the level of scientific biological hypo...
Holy God, we confess that we have focused too much on our religion, and not enough on our hearts. We confess that we might sit in church on Sunday, but the Gospel does not emerge from our lives the re...
In this fictionalized pastoral counseling session, the Episcopalian Priest Robert Farrar Capon shares some eternal truths related to the nature of religion—and in conclusion, how Christianity differs....
The crux of our dilemma is that for some Christians, we’ve allowed our politics to inform our theology rather than our theology and worship of the Christ informing our politics.
Exodus 3:7-10, Micah 6:8, Matthew 25:40, Galatians 6:2, Psalm 82:3-4
In 1830, the Indian Removal Act led to what’s known as the Trail of Tears, in which almost fifty thousand indigenous people were removed from the southeastern United States and relocated west of the M...
In his post-apocalyptic novel The Road, McCarthy tells a story about a father and son traveling in search of civilization,. In a bleak, desolate world devoid of any human civilization, McCarthy descri...