You  may have seem this video on the news.  A 23-year-old Indiana man, Gregory Smith, was attempting to rob a bank clerk.  When the woman started crying and praying, Smith fell to his knee’s and started praying with her.  In a jailhouse interview with WRTV, Smith said:
It had to be God working through her because [...]

The best selling book of 1955 was Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking. I recently read parts of the book as part of some research I was doing on that era. There are a lot of things about Peale’s version of Christianity that troubled me, and here is one example:
Just as there exist [...]

Malcolm Gladwell’s recent article in the New Yorker argues that Wall Street’s recent meltdown may not have been due to a lack of regulation or a lack of information, but a surplus of overconfidence. He looks at the pros and cons of overconfidence for world affairs and economics, and concludes:
From an individual perspective, it is [...]

I recently viewed some clips of the documentary Hell House. It seemed similar in tone and style to Jesus Camp, as both filmmakers were not initially sympathetic to their subjects, but also committed to letting them represent themselves. And, both films feature Christians in middle America who are politically conservative and charismatic in their worship [...]

The problem with turning 500 is that you start to sound old. John Calvin, who was born 500 years ago today, will be remembered by many today as a dour old codger who loved to talk about sin and depravity, someone who was always in a bad mood. It’s true that Calvin [...]

There’s been a fair amount of press coverage lately about situations where parents are refusing medical treatment for their kids based on religious reasons.  Parents are currently in court or on the run from authorities being accused of neglect.
In one case, a Wisconsin mom is on trial, charged with second degree homicide, after her 11-year-old [...]

As a Christian in a mosque, I wondered how Muslims would be treated in a church. Are churches open for visits by Muslims?

One of my favorite evenings as a pastor was the night of Ash Wednesday worship.  It was always a quieter service, a smaller crowd, a gentler pace.  No swarms of people trying to hang up coats and tripping over kids.  No last minute announcements that needed to be made.  No band going over chords at [...]

For almost sixty years, we’ve published a daily devotional booklet, first called The Family Altar and then Today. And we print hundreds of thousands of them every two months. Many on our mailing list receive the Today in bulk, for redistribution in their own congregations and neighborhoods.
Lately though, because of the economic downturn, we decided [...]

I was a Twitter skeptic before I was a Twitter convert. Why, exactly, do I need a more efficient method of delivery for the mundanities of other people’s lives? I only got hooked on Twitter – which, for the uninitiated, is basically a mini-blog – through some of its other uses: dispensing quips, bookmarking links, [...]