In this blog post last weekend, I introduced you briefly to a new book about the murder of a journalist in India and about India's increasingly autocratic, self-certain and frightening government. I ...

Berkeley, Calif. -- I'm here to celebrate my birthday with my oldest sister, who lives here, and my youngest sister, who lives in Chicagoland. My third sister, a Cape Cod resident, couldn't make the ...

Over the last several decades, the political climate in the U.S. has turned bitter and disastrous. A new book I'll introduce you to today can help us understand why. And although I recommend that you ...

When I served on a committee that helped to oversee the theological education of Presbyterian seminary students in my area, we would require those students to write a new "statement of faith" each ...

As many Christians and Jews know, not every ancient religious manuscript coming out of Judaism and, later, Christianity has made it into the Bible. The so-called "gnostic gospels," for instance, ...

Since the recent election -- and even before -- leaders of religious congregations have been struggling with the question of whether and how to be "political" in what they say and in how they guide ...

A few weeks ago here on the blog, I wrote about the difference between "private religion" and more communal approaches to being part of a faith tradition. I invited readers to respond with their ...

As we move to the end of a remarkable year that has been challenging in countless of ways, I've been thinking about the big picture. You know, an eternal view. A cosmic sense of things. It's been one ...

In many ways, the core of religion has to do with helping people to recognize what a gift life is and to find ways to live what the New Testament sometimes calls an abundant life, which is what Yale ...

As I've done on a few Christmases here on the blog, I'm resurrecting a Christmas story that I wrote for the now-defunct Sunday magazine of The Kansas City Star in 1982. It draws on the characters in a ...