From The Atlantic by Olga Khazan: First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes … actually reverse that. First comes the baby, then, we’ll see. For people who don’t have a college degree, having a child in wedlock has become the exception, not the rule. According to a new analysis presented at the Population Association of America, among parents aged 26 to 31 who didn’t graduate from college, 74 percent of the mothers and 70 percent of the fathers had at least one child... Read more

Jeremy Bouma and Mike Bird: Michael Bird says he likes to open his Romans class each year with a special question: Paul dictated the message of Romans; who actually wrote the message down? After the class settles on Tertius, he asks another: Who delivered Romans? Who was Paul’s envoy? After receiving confused faces and odd looks, he brings his students to Romans 16. Drawing their attention to Phoebe and discussing the role of letter carriers in antiquity, Bird asks yet another question: If... Read more

Chapter 6 of  J. Richard Middleton’s book The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 addresses the question of the nature of God revealed in creation. Most of the Mesopotamian creation myths involve creation as part of some great cosmic battle. This combat motif is also present in Canaanite myths. Scholars have found traces of the combat creation myths common in the ancient Near East in the Old Testament. Some believe that this cosmic battle motif is so deep... Read more

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David Briggs: Is this a way of also most politicized? or Constantinian? The nation’s largest religious body is also by far the most likely to have its congregations take to the streets in public demonstrations or lobby the halls of power on moral issues, a new study finds. And the Catholic Church’s prominent role on a broad range of issues from abortion to immigration reform may become even more pronounced as U.S. officials aim to follow the lead of Pope... Read more

For the last several years, I’ve conducted research (academically and personally) regarding the way Christians view Muslims. The results should concern people of different faiths committed to truth, understanding, and dialog. While it is easy (as I will demonstrate below) to mix up global Christianity and global Islam with North American Christianity and North American Islam . . .  my primary research interest has been how the tension and stereotypes affect religious and cultural life in the U.S. While Christians... Read more

British, mate, and it’s high time they took credit for the term “soccer.” Which, my friends, is a way of saying it is “political.” Which is also a way of saying that by colonizing “football” for soccer, our good friends across the water have dissed those who play and prefer rugby (football). We in the U.S., of course, would disagree. And now we have a clearer understanding of why. In May, Stefan Szymanski, a sports economist at the University of... Read more