Prayer has been a struggle for me throughout my life. I committed my life to Christ as a teen in a small Baptist church […]
Arts & Culture
Superman’s Crisis of Identity
I remember my first and favorite toy well: Superman. […]
The Everyday Onslaught
Citizen: An American Lyric Claudia Rankine Graywolf Press, 160 pages By Carol Wild | December 2, 2015 Recently I read an article that challenged readers who are white to read only books written by authors of color. That led me to [...]
Review: Sabbath as Resistance
Walter Brueggemann is one of those rare authors who transcends reductive labels (liberal/conservative, mainline/evangelical) by paying attention to the Bible’s irreducible word. Like the prophets he passionately interprets in his dozens of books and hundreds of articles, Brueggemann is on […]
The Scene of Miracle Among Us
By Christina Tinglof “Wherever you turn your eyes the world shines like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it but a little willingness to see. Only who could have the courage to see it?” The first time […]
Charles Pettee: The Psalms Are Folk Music
Charles Pettee: The Psalms Are Folk Music By Paul Koptak September 2015 After a Catholic school upbringing and an evangelical season in high school, Charles Pettee headed off to college thinking that too much of the faith he had [...]
Sound Picks: Songs of Searching
Reviewed by John Potter Sometimes songs that weren’t written to be sung in church are the ones that connect us to God most deeply. Here are six albums released in the last decade that you won’t find in the “Christian […]
The Poetry of Grief
By Elise Steel My faith journey started when I was seventeen years old. I thought God had complete control of the world—so much control that once someone became a Christian, bad things no longer happened to him or her. Life […]
History of a People
Congo: The Epic History of a People David Van Reybrouck Translated by Sam Garrett Ecco, 2014 639 pages If you liked King Leopold’s Ghost, Adam Hochschild’s tale of the carving up of Congo by King Leopold of Belgium, you will […]
A Call to Action
A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power Jimmy Carter Simon & Schuster, 2014 224 pages Jimmy Carter left the presidency before I was born, so my images of him tend to emerge from history books: pictures of long […]
The Selma Effect
By Marcus Antoine Simmons “People who innovated, created, and who love despite pressures and tortures unimaginable. They are in our bloodstream, pumping our hearts every second. They’ve prepared you. You are already prepared.” Amelia Boynton Robinson speaks these words over […]
Review: Telling the Truth
I served a church where we regularly confessed our sins in unison readings or responsively, followed by words of assurance from one of the pastors. After several months a friend came up to me concerned that always having to confess […]