At my church we recently concluded a sermon series in which we answered questions submitted by the congregation. One of the submissions read, “Do miracles really happen?” I regularly talk with people who...
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Russia is in the Western news often. War in Ukraine, interference with elections, Trump/Putin jockeying, poisoning of an intelligence agent, sanctions. Is a new Cold War emerging? It’s actually an East/West...
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Criminals and I have something in common: I view myself as a good person. Better than most, even. “Perhaps the most surprising discovery in my early years of trying to understand the criminal mind was that,...
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A group of teens started listing why they disliked certain Bible stories. It began with Job and ended with Ananias and Sapphira. “What kind of God kills people for lying?” Certain biblical passages make us...
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“At that time the Canaanites were in the land.” With that casual aside, the biblical account of Abraham and Sarah arriving in Canaan states that the territory already was populated. “To your offspring I...
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Seldom a week goes by that I don’t hear about relationships being frayed because of political differences. “How can you claim to be a Christian and vote for Trump/Clinton?” Political affiliation and...
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Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election surprised almost everyone. How did it happen? Evangelical Christians had a lot to do with it. In Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald...
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A classmate once told me the biblical story she found most irredeemable was that of Noah and his ark. When Joshua slaughters cities in God’s name, you can always blame Joshua. But who do you blame when God...
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It was big news in Canada when the Supreme Court denied an appeal by Trinity Western University to have a decision against its law school overturned because of the university’s stance against...
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For Mennonite pastors, conversations about boundaries can be difficult. Recent cases of boundary violations have rocked theological and institutional understandings of ourselves. In Pennsylvania, the public...
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In her excellent 2013 study of the Amish romance, Thrill of the Chaste, Valerie Weaver-Zercher decisively argues that books about the Amish are predominantly written for an evangelical Christian audience. The...
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The first thing “not good” in creation (presumably excepting the snakes) was a human being alone. This should probably not be surprising, from a Christian perspective. After all, humans were made in the...
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I ran across an article about a disturbing trend in plastic surgery in which people alter their faces to look like filtered selfies taken with apps like Facetune or Snapchat, which modify appearance by...
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Sunday school is dying. And that’s OK. Technically, the whole church is dying in the Western world. Few expect the church to actually die, however. Religion remains a uniquely powerful force in human...
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With more than 2 million men and women held in U.S. jails and prisons, the need for criminal justice reform has become evident. But legislators disagree on what these reforms should look like. Some believe...
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In the 21st century, “conservative” is wrapped in layers of often-ambiguous political, religious and cultural meanings. That’s a big reason why the Conservative Mennonite Conference this summer decided...
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“More to the right!” “No, go left!” “From where I stand it looks like you just need to center it.” We are on a youth-group service trip. The shouting isn’t about politics. It is about locating...
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Over the past several decades, one remarkable initiative in Mennonite higher education has been in the new academic field of peace and conflict studies. Mennonite schools across North America — from Fresno...
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In the beginning the world was a blank canvas. Then God flipped on the studio lights, stepped up to the easel and threw God’s self headlong into creation. For days, even ages, God worked without rest, lost...
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Authentic movements to Jesus happen all over the globe. From North America, though, sometimes it seems they’re all “out there” in Africa, Asia or Latin America. Yet the heart of God is for North...
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A book called Prayer, by Ole Hallesby — a Norwegian Christian who wrote in the early 1900s — changed my understanding of that basic-to-our-humanity, up-reaching thing we call prayer. I will share in my own...
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Hardly anyone could have imagined the dramatic shift in relationships that has happened in the past year in the United States. Our communities have become edgy, waiting for the next tragedy to happen. The...
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These texts from Paul provide an excellent coda to our conversations about ethics, justice and the Christian life. Although Romans is rightly considered Paul’s most important theological writing, he most of...
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About eight years ago, Christiana Peterson, her husband and daughter moved from urban Washington, D.C., to an intentional Christian community in rural north-central Illinois. Their motives were many:...
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When the cafe worker offered me plastic cutlery with my to-go salad, I declined, thinking of the bamboo fork, spoon and knife in my backpack. Ditto for the straw with my iced tea; the travel set came with a...
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