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I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard both men and women in the church say—about women in leadership or women’s ordination issues—something to the effect of,  “It’s just impossible to ignore certain Scripture passages” (the “certain Scripture passages” being taken to mean a blanket rejection of women in leadership by the apostle Paul).…

One of the gifts of Christmas family reunions (that, with the size and spread of a very large extended family only happen every ten years or so) is meeting a long-lost relative who you can get to know a bit and fall in love with. My aunt Sally raised six children without killing herself, used…

Whiny children with grubby hands lining up to grab at the hem of Your clothes in the bread and the wine. Pretty please. Only an indulgent parent would begrudge the presumption with which we take the bite-size pieces or the desultory thank yous to Christ’s body and blood shed for you— maybe because You know…

As a former Episcopalian with great affection for Anglicanism, I’m taking a little break from our regular Tuesday and Thursday series on holy space with photojournalist Katie Archibald-Woodward to get on my soap box and give thanks for yesterday’s overwhelming support shown yesterday by the Church of England’s General Synod in favor of the ordination…

It’s not every day that you get to sit down at tea time with His Holiness. But that’s precisely what happened a couple weeks ago for the prominent Italian journalist and atheist Eugenio Scalfari. An unexpected phone call from the most powerful figure in Western Christianity today, Pope Francis, became an intimate, in-person chat and…

How does one tell a history of silence? After all, silence encapsulates everything not said—the elisions and the possibilities, the inchoate, unexplored universe beyond the hard limits of our language. Oxford historian Diarmaid MacCulloch’s latest book Silence: A Christian History achieves this feat; and silence, as what might easily be construed as the “underside” of…

It’s been too long. I’m sorry. Life has been, well, too fast-paced lately—and will remain so until mid November. But I’ve missed you. This week, I’ve been reflecting on gratitude and silence. First, gratitude: The other night my son asked to sit at the head of the table over dinner (usually a position allocated for…

Religion Today recently posted the results of a survey of Americans’ understanding of the term, “religious.” Apparently the old divide between those who define religiosity based solely on faith and beliefs (historically Protestants) and those who take the concept to mean primarily a person’s good works (historically Catholics) persists. The survey, carried out by the…

Something about good food, wine, art and the charm of the Italian people here in Tuscany has kept me from writing the last two weeks. For that I am a bit sorry– but admittedly not very much. In the last two weeks, while my husband teaches a summer program in Montepulciano, I have had the…

If you tune in to one of my favorite blogs, Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish, you’ll find an ongoing conversation there about the occasional promise and (more commonly) perils of the generation that follows mine: the “Millennials.” This demographic is of great interest- mainly because one in three Americans under the age of 30 now goes…
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