Prayer during a long, hot campaign

Episcopalians have expressed their concern about the tenor of Trump and his massive political rallies. Statements have ranged from scolding to more subtly critical.

Stephen, full of power and grace

Could I ask, with the martyr St. Stephen, "O Lord, give me every disadvantage, every difficulty, every hardness. Send me out with no tools, no friends, no worldly hopes of vengeance or reward. Put me among the hateful, the violent, the diseased, the unstable"?

Telling the Passion

When he devised the first nativity scene, Francis of Assisi wanted to show that God had a share in poverty. In a similar way and in roughly the same period, the five wounds of Christ were the subject of devotion in prayers, poems, meditations, charms, and even guilds.

Jesus, Mel Gibson, and the alpha issue

Our new Presiding Bishop talks about Jesus and "the Jesus Movement" a great deal. I expect Episcopalians will find a degree of unity around this theme. But I don’t expect us to stop fighting. Why? Because there are still two very different narratives about Jesus in play.

Postscript: fides ex auditu

The proliferation of popular I am hurt and wounded style songs is itself sobering, having moved well beyond the pathos of, say, Patsy Cline in their stark descriptions.

Policy of truth

I will only sketch here the beginnings of a constructive Christian response to the false religion of violence and assault that is proving so seductive for our contemporary western culture, as for so many cultures before.

Sounds of assault

As Amy Ziering has said, campus sexual assaults are not “just a date gone bad, or a bad hook-up, or, you know, miscommunication,” but instead “a highly calculated, premeditated crime.”