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A quick word on “W,” Oliver Stone’s lazy bio-pic about our current president:  The movie is unimaginative and uninteresting on most every level–how many close-ups of the bottle of Jack Daniels do we need, exactly, before Stone has us convinced that young George has a drinking problem?–but since President Bush has become known (sigh) as…

Relevant asks, “What are some crucial changes that our churches need to make to become a Eucharist that is broken and poured out for the world?” Pastor Bell answers: 1. Master the art of doubt. Faith needs it to survive.  2. Surrender the compulsive need to constantly remind people that according to your worldview you’re…

John Piper’s engaged asceticism is timely advice for American Christians who are worshipping at the altar of patriotism and the electoral process. I wish he’d emphasize that “Godward purposes” are, in fact, a call to deal with the world in the sense of remaking and cultivating, which is a call to cease the worship of…

Today’s blogged excerpt from Andy Crouch’s book at the Culture-Making site asks urgent, necessary questions. Forget about the election, and ponder this: If we believe that God is still on the move in human cultures, then our most basic questions have to be,What is God doing in culture? What is his vision for the horizons…

Last Friday, I was working at Wisdom Tea House (a dream of a place) when my friend Daniel Clark came in to join me for the afternoon. “30 hours ago I was in a jungle,” he said as he sat down. “Being here makes me feel sick.”   Daniel was in the midst of culture…

One of the most unshakeable reading experiences I’ve had in the last year is Don Lattin’s Jesus Freaks: A True Story of Murder and Madness on the Evangelical Edge. Taking a cue from Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven, Lattin uses the story of a freakish murder-suicide as the occasion to research the nature…

The classic debate between Darwinian evolutionism and young-earth creationism is often seen as a moldy conflict between atheism and theism. That’s never been quite true–some of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Christians who articulated “The Fundamentals” of the faith (and gave us the religious term “fundamentalist”) could imagine how aspects of evolution were compatible with…

Book of Common Prayer, Proper 24: Almighty and everlasting God, in Christ you have revealed your glory among the nations: Preserve the works of your mercy, that your Church throughout the world may persevere with steadfast faith in the confession of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and…

Check out this fascinating (if I do say so myself) essay we’ve just published by Frederica Mathewes-Green on suffering and perfection. She writes in response to a host of voices, from James Woods in The New Yorker to Bart Ehrman on this site, who have been revisiting arguments against God from theodicy: If God is…

A must-read essay from Andy Crouch: “Why I Am Hopeful.” Andy isn’t gleeful about the fractures we’re seeing in capitalist structures, but the coming hard times, he says, give us a chance to become people of better, deeper, more godly character. An excerpt:  [O]ur culture is pretty afflicted right now. Which is why I am…
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