Writing

The Christian intellectual tradition is alive and well
Religion News Service, August 31, 2016
So why have commentators bemoaned the absence of Christian thinkers as authoritative voices in American public debates?
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Religious traditionalists and LGBT activists should check their passions and compromise
Religion News Service, August 24, 2016
A California bill to protect LBGT rights on college campuses has sparked a raucous debate.
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Clinton probably won’t court evangelicals. Here’s why she should
Religion News Service, July 29, 2016
Politically, she has little to gain and a great deal to lose. But from the standpoint of democratic discourse, the time may be ripe to challenge evangelicals’ loyalty to Republican politicians.
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Why NARAL’s new video is ethically vapid
Religion News Service, July 21, 2016
Unable to abide any consideration of the fetus at all, NARAL portrays abortion as an easy fix for women who do not wish to “incubate a person.”
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How ‘A Prairie Home Companion’ made American religion real
Religion News Service, July 6, 2016
Over four decades, Garrison Keillor showed what is good, endearing and enduring about his brand of Protestantism.
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On Issues of Race, Southern Baptists Must Move From Gestures to Action
Religion News Service, June 16, 2016
Without moral clarity and leadership on substantive issues that matter deeply to African-Americans and other minorities, the SBC’s awakened conscience will start to ring hollow.
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Religious Americans Should Take Up Obama’s Call for a Moral Awakening
Religion News Service, May 27, 2016
The first visit of an American president to Hiroshima occasions a broader and ongoing debate about the ethics and strategic value of nuclear weapons.
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Why United Methodists’ Chaos on Sexuality Issues Will Continue
Religion News Service, May 23, 2016
United Methodists had a chance to confront reality and begin to chart a way forward. Instead, they ratified the status quo, appointed a committee, and kicked the can down the road. In other words, they did the most Methodist thing ever.
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Evangelicals Must Confront the Ethical Dilemma of Partisanship
Religion News Service, May 2, 2016
Political parties need vigorous moral and philosophical debate, and that will not happen if evangelicals oppose all Democrats as a matter of course.
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How Georgetown Fosters a Civil Debate on Abortion
Religion News Service, April 14, 2016
I find the conservative critique that “Georgetown is not Catholic enough” to be weak and misinformed.
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Why Doubting the Bible Is Good for Christians
The Washington Post, March 25, 2016
Ash Wednesday reminds us we are dead in our sins and, soon enough, dead in fact. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
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On Ash Wednesday, I Remember: I Am a Sinner. I Wil Die
Religion News Service, February 10, 2016
Ash Wednesday reminds us we are dead in our sins and, soon enough, dead in fact. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
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Is Wheaton Reconciled with Doc Hawk or with Conservative Evangelicals?
Religion News Service, February 9, 2016
If separating from a tenured professor under a confidential agreement is “reconciliation,” then surely the word has no meaning.
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Evangelicals, It’s Time for a Gut Check on Trump
Religion News Service, January 28, 2016
The Christian right faces a critical choice: It can be small and have integrity, or it can be “yuge” and disastrous.
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Anglican-Episcopal Clash May Spell Theological Revision
Religion News Service, January 22, 2016
The censure of the Episcopal Church raises vital questions about whether divergent teachings on marriage and sexuality constitute minor differences of interpretation or major theological revisions.
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‘Spotlight’ Movie Explores Journalists’ Catholic Abuse Coverage, Loss of Faith
Religion News Service, November 20, 2015
I moved to Boston the week Cardinal Bernard Law resigned. As I read those chilling Globe reports, I sensed that the darkness and an unusually cold winter were apt metaphors for the heartbreak and pain the scandal caused.
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Don’t Change Catholic Teaching on Marriage, Says Remarried Protestant
Religion News Service, November 13, 2015
The Church that Christ founded on Peter should avoid becoming a loose confederacy of warring regional ecclesial jurisdictions.
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Why Richard Dawkins’ New Book Won’t Win Him Many Converts
Religion News Service, October 16, 2015
The dialogue between faith and science will continue, but it is doubtful that Richard Dawkins will show interest in contributing meaningfully to it.
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In Meeting Kim Davis, Pope Francis Confounds and Challenges
Religion News Service, September 30, 2015
Conservative Catholics often complain that Pope Francis, especially in his unscripted moments, sows confusion. Now, for a change, progressives are grappling with that frustration.
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Kim Davis’ Indefensible Position Puts Traditionalists on the Spot
Religion News Service, September 11, 2015
Kentucky clerk Kim Davis has hindered the public debate about religious liberty for traditionalist believers at a time when it needs serious arguments, not circus-tent theatrics.
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The Bible Ties Freedom to Debt Relief. Americans Should Too
Religion News Service, September 1, 2015
Debt relief would improve prospects for political and economic flourishing for millions of people in dozens of countries. It is literally a life-and-death issue.
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For Conservative Christian Colleges, No Middle Ground on Gay Rights
Religion News Service, August 14, 2015
After two member schools affirm faculty in same-sex marriages, Tennessee’s Union University withdraws from the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.
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Faith Groups Adding Urgency to Calls for Prison Reform
Religion News Service, July 30, 2015
Criminal justice reform is not just an issue. It is essential to the gospel: Redeemed sinners proclaiming mercy in the name of Christ.
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Why the Culture War’s Losers Shouldn’t Retreat from Public Life
Religion News Service, July 1, 2015
A critique of Rod Dreher’s “Benedict Option”
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Tears of Joy, Tears of Sorrow, and Little Empathetic Listening
Religion News Service, June 26, 2015
Most people of faith are either elated or devastated by the Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage. Is it possible to sympathize with both?
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Why a ‘Yes’ to Gays Is Often a ‘No’ to Evangelicalism
Religion News Service, June 10, 2015
Can evangelical elites afford to maintain rigid boundary issues around sexual ethics? Can they afford not to?
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Are Churches Failing the Poor? Yes and No
Religion News Service, May 21, 2015
What do Christians owe the poor? Surely comfortable churchgoers must do more than say, “Be more like me.”
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What Catholics Can Teach America about Polarized Politics
Religion News Service, May 4, 2015
Compared with secular ideologies and other churches’ political pronouncements, Catholic social teaching offers the most comprehensively and authentically Christian ethic.
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Conservative Evangelicalism’s Gender Role Rift: Whither Women?
Religion Dispatches, April 14, 2015
While most observers wait for evangelicals to shift on marriage, the more salient debates taking place within conservative Protestantism concern women’s roles.
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Affirmation Is Not a Civil Right, and It Cannot Be Coerced
Religion News Service, April 14, 2015
If traditionalists eventually abandon their religious opposition to homosexuality, it will be because of persuasion, not coercion.
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The Southern Baptists’ Challenge On Race
Religion News Service, March 27, 2015
If Southern Baptists’ public posture remains primarily a catalog of concerns of aggrieved white conservatives, they shouldn’t be surprised if few black folks come along.
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Religion Won’t Save Cruz’s White House Bid
The Daily Beast, March 24, 2015
The Texas senator is about to learn that evangelical appeal only takes you so far in the GOP.
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Americans of Faith Must Recondsider Stands On Nuclear Weapons
Religion News Service, March 16, 2015
The global concern about the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons invites Americans of faith to engage a vital issue after years of complacency.
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Theological Purity Tests Will Ruin Presidents and the Presidency
Religion News Service, February 24, 2015
The trouble with making presidents’ religiosity just another weapon in our ongoing ideological war is that we may have ruined religion for presidents themselves.
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The Religious Politics of Abortion Are More Nuanced Than We Think
Religion News Service, January 22, 2015
The absolutism of polarized abortion activists on both sides betrays the more ambivalent views of rank-and-file Americans.
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In Defense of Christmas and Easter Christians
The Atlantic, December 24, 2014
Rather than judging their lapsed brethren, observant Christians may want to think about how, on Christmas Eve of all days, he might be born in their hearts again.
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Before Pronouncing Fido In Heaven, Let’s Consider Human Creatures
Religion News Service, December 22, 2014
It is at the supermarket, not the pearly gates, where we grapple with pressing ethical and theological dilemmas about nonhuman animals.
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