The Dean of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., which is an Episcopal Church institution but serves as a place for national religious pageantry, wants to remove two over sixty-year-old stained glass windows honoring Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. “There is . . . . Continue Reading »
It was a special privilege for me to attend the formal publication of the green encyclical by Pope Francis on June 18, 2015. Laudato Si: On Care for our Common Home was jointly released in the new synod hall of the Vatican by His Eminence Peter Cardinal Turkson of the Pontifical Council for Justice . . . . Continue Reading »
There’s been much talk lately about the moral purposes of history, especially from those celebrating the recent Supreme Court decision regarding gay marriage. History, we hear, is on the side of ever-expanding personal freedom, and those who counter this expansion are history’s losers. This . . . . Continue Reading »
Media reports of the last week have speculated that recent fires at black churches are racist arsons somehow linked to the horrible murders at the historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. A July 1 headline in The Atlantic ominously declared: “Black Churches Are Burning Again . . . . Continue Reading »
Evangelicals are debating the historicity of Adam, but they are too timid. It is time to reject fundamentalist distortions of the Abrahamic narrative just as decisively as we have abandoned literalistic readings of Genesis 1–3. Clinging to discredited biblical accounts of Abraham as if these . . . . Continue Reading »
After you exit the interstate and turn on a two lane strip of asphalt headed towards Wendell Berry’s old Kentucky home, one of the first signs you see proclaims—with the leading word emblazoned in red letters: “Caution, Church Entrance Ahead.” It is a warning that Mr. Berry, the celebrated . . . . Continue Reading »
As I stood before more than seven hundred college graduates and their families during our annual ritual called commencement, I wondered if our graduates’ children will be allowed the privilege of the kind of education they received in a Christian liberal arts university. The future is not certain. . . . . Continue Reading »
Happy Canada Day, America! One decade later, your judges have turned you, too, into a nation of bastards. I don’t mean that in quite the usual sense, of course—you’ve been doing a fine job yourselves, without any help from us, of turning out fatherless children. I mean rather that . . . . Continue Reading »
Please enjoy this excerpt from “The Public Square” of the forthcoming August/September issue of First Things. To read more, subscribe here.Laudato Si addresses global warming and other environmental issues, as well as global development and economic justice. The conjunction of concerns is . . . . Continue Reading »
Never has a piece of writing spread across my social media niche as prolifically as Mark Oppenheimer’s Time essay arguing for an end to federal tax exemptions for religious organizations. In the past few days, more than two dozen Facebook friends shared the article, each one appending either . . . . Continue Reading »