Not long ago one of my students described herself as a “free range Christian,” alluding to the diverse and varied character of her denominational past.  The phrase captures in a fresh way a reality that has been true of the American spiritual landscape for quite some time. Robert Bellah described it in Habits of the [...]

Traffic jams force you to pay attention to the back of the car just ahead of you and after years of attending to the philosophical and political commitments of other drivers, I’ve concluded that not all bumper sticker wisdom finally wears well. One of the widespread bits of wisdom that doesn’t wear well from a [...]

Novelist, English professor, and committed Christian, Reynolds Price, died this week.  He was 77, had battled spinal cancer, and spent much of his life in a wheelchair.  When he went to Duke University 53 years ago he was offered a three year, non-renewable contract.  But the success of his first novel changed all of that. [...]

Once, while the great Jewish sage, Honi, was walking along a road, he saw an old man planting a carob tree.  Honi asked him:  “How many years will it take for this tree to give forth its fruit?”  The man answered that it would require 70 years.  Honi asked:  “Are you so healthy a man that you expect to live [...]

In the wake of yesterday’s tragic shooting of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords no small number of commentators were quick to lay blame for the climate in which this kind of thing could happen at the doorstep of millions who differ with Ms. Giffords’s views.  I find that troubling — not because I share those views [...]

I love aphorisms — short, pointed, insightful observations. It all started with writing speeches for the Optimist Club.  They once sponsored “oratorical contests” and I loved competing in them.  Each year they advertised a new topic and the assignment was to write, memorize, and deliver a speech of five to seven minutes in length.  The [...]

We’ve celebrated two new years now…one driven by the calendar, the other driven by the liturgical year.  The liturgical year, which you can think of as the year, structured by the Christian story began at Advent in the beginning of December and takes us imaginatively through the story of Jesus’ life and the lives of [...]