Problems with Forgiveness

By Amber Noel The priest says, “Let us confess our sins against God and our neighbor,” and maybe (if you’re lucky), there’s a period of silence before you launch into “Most merciful God,” during which your e... Read More...

Confessions of a Penitential Orderer

By Matthew S. C. Olver I despise the Penitential Order. Scratch that. I actually have come to think that the so-called Penitential Order in the 1979 BCP is theologically and ritually preferable. I just hate the name the prayer book gave to it. Now that w... Read More...

Forgiving Yourself

By Marcia Hotchkiss Last December my husband and I went to a party where we saw many old friends from a ministry we were involved in decades ago. One attractive and lovely woman told me matter-of-factly how ... Read More...

Forgiving Others

By Marcia Hotchkiss In the fall of 2019 a criminal court jury in my home city of Dallas, Texas, found an off-duty white police officer, Amber Guyger, guilty of murder after she shot and killed an unarmed bla... Read More...

Mercy First, Then Forgiveness

By Chip Prehn The more one knows, the more one’s mercy grows. He who knows all things is the most merciful of all. Lately the Sunday lessons from Holy Scripture appear to teach the same doctrine, whether the text is from the Old Testament or the New: our he... Read More...

Atonement Versus Cancel Culture

By Russ Levenson, Jr. I love stories with surprising endings. Leon Uris, author of the 1958 bestseller Exodus failed high school English three times. When Lucille Ball began studying to be an actress in 1... Read More...

Grace and Social Justice

By Molly Jane Layton “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church.” So begins Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s compelling book The Cost of Discipleship, written as he grappled with the reality of the German Church’s ... Read More...