God
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The Pope, the Party, and the President March 31, 2025
The second Trump administration has surfaced a growing divide. No, it is not the President’s quarrel with former “Governor” Justin Trudeau of the 51st state. Nor is it the long-documented divide between MAGA and the “swamp” establishment. Though typi...
Reflections on The Akathist Hymn March 31, 2025
The Lenten journey is one of following Christ. Throughout the ages, a great many Lenten hymns, prayers, and devotions involving Mary have developed. That’s not surprising at all. For Lent is about standing up and following Jesus, just as His mother d...
This Group of Americans is Becoming More Religious March 31, 2025
For Ginn, Eastern Orthodoxy provided an action-oriented approach to faith, one that emphasized discipline, fasting and spiritual growth. “There is this element of the call to action of going and living a holy life and participating in the energies of...
Restoring the Lord’s Day March 28, 2025
But why did blue laws exist? In Protestant lands, it was to “observe the Sabbath” and “get thee to church.” But Catholic lands had blue laws, too, to “observe the Sabbath”…but in a broader, more global sense.All this is a build up to my endorsement o...
Why Pastors Like Me Burn Out March 28, 2025
The first church I ever pastored on my own wasn’t very big. I was an Episcopal priest then; I’m a Catholic priest now. Back then, on a good Sunday we’d gather just over a hundred souls. Faithful, diverse, families of all kinds, folks of all kinds – i...
The Brutalist: Big Picture or "Social Awareness" Tropes? March 28, 2025
Overwhelming in production and in plot twists, beautiful in its cinematography, engrossing in its subject matter and performances, The Brutalist lingers in the theater-goer’s mind.The film is garnering a new round of attention due to its three Oscars...
Will the Supreme Court Safeguard the Church's Mission? March 28, 2025
At Yankee Stadium in 1979, amid a gathering of 80,000 faithful, Pope Saint John Paul II shared a profound reminder. He declared, “The poor of the United States and of the world are your brothers and sisters in Christ.” He urged us not to settle for o...
Are We Expecting Too Much of the Church? March 27, 2025
We should expect the Christian church to be a community that faithfully preaches and teaches the word of God, a place where people are safe from predators and fraudsters (or where predators and fraudsters are dealt with swiftly, justly and openly whe...
The Mind in a Mustard Seed March 26, 2025
The Harvard study came out just months before All Things are Full of Gods, a new philosophical dialogue by theologian David Bentley Hart on The Mysteries of Mind and Life. Hart’s characters—especially the two principals, Psyche and Hephaistos—would s...
They Stopped Going to Church. Community is Bringing Them Back. March 26, 2025
Emma Camp grew up going to church with her family, but she stopped attending as a teenager. “I felt that unless I had a strong sense of literal faith there wasn’t a point,” she tells Yahoo Life. But a few years ago, as an adult, she went back. “I had...
The Long Orphic Shadow March 26, 2025
Michael Horton’s new book Shaman and Sage: The Roots of “Spiritual But Not Religious” in Antiquity, is really two studies in one. The first is historical: as book one of a planned three-volume project, Shaman and Sage is a massive, deeply researched ...
What St. Francis and Br. Wolf Teach Us About Cooperating With Creation March 25, 2025
"Praised be You, my Lord, with all Your creatures." These timeless words were penned by St. Francis of Assisi about 800 years ago in his hymn, "The Canticle of the Creatures." Within these verses, Francis offers a profound vision of creation as a liv...
No, All Religions Don’t Lead to God March 25, 2025
We hear a lot these days about “re-enchantment,” by which people usually mean that Richard-Dawkins-style secular materialism is going out of style, being replaced by a renewed fascination with spirituality, the occult, and the supernatural. But this ...
Firm Faith Doesn’t Require a Closed Mind March 24, 2025
“Should a Christian have an open mind?” When a student raised that question in class, I did not know how to answer at first—I felt caught between two competing convictions.On one hand, “open-mindedness” seems to run contrary to the Christian doctrine...
The Angel of YHWH March 24, 2025
Abraham, Hagar, Moses, and Gideon all encounter the angel of YHWH. What is this divine being and how are we to understand its relationship to YHWH?...
Flannery O’Connor’s Tales of Evil and Grace March 21, 2025
Flannery O’Connor, arguably the best Catholic writer this country ever produced, was born 100 years ago March 25 in Savannah, Ga. Her short life was marked by profound suffering: She was 15 when her father died of lupus and 25 when she was diagnosed ...
What the Olives Tell Us: The Search for Peace in Israel March 21, 2025
When I was in elementary school, more decades ago than I care to admit, my family lived for two years in Tel Aviv. We were new immigrants from the former Soviet Union, part of the mass exodus that managed to make it out right before that shaky behemo...
What Does it Mean to Give God the Glory in Sports? March 21, 2025
It’s all over the place: the push to move yourself up the ladder of influence, success and fame. From self-indulgent Instagram posts to pushing a teammate out of the way to end up on top, we can be tempted to try and amass as much glory for ourselves...
The Forgotten Woman Who Preached in Congress March 20, 2025
On a brisk January morning in 1827, Harriet Livermore mounted the speaker’s chair in the Hall of Representatives and became one of the first women to deliver a sermon in the United States Congress. She preached to an overflowing crowd of more than a ...
'God-Fearing Americans' Set to Rally Against Planned 'Black Mass' March 20, 2025
A group of “God-fearing Americans” is pushing back against a plan to hold a satanic “black mass” for abortion rights at the Kansas state Capitol later this month.TFP Student Action, a project of the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Fami...
God in a Box March 20, 2025
This week’s Torah portion, Vayakhel, tells the story of how the Jewish people fulfilled the instructions of God to build the very first house of God in history. The Mishkan—“tabernacle” or “sanctuary”—was constructed in the wilderness. It was a porta...
The Two Sides of the Dallas Charter March 18, 2025
Cardinal Wilton Gregory has now retired as the archbishop of Washington, D.C. In 2001, Gregory was elected president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The following year, the abuse crisis erupted in Boston, and the American bishops...
Baptism Is Not Optional March 18, 2025
What is baptism? Is it necessary? Does it do anything? Who can receive it, and when, and how?These are just some of the questions my students carry into the classroom. I teach theology in Bible Belt, red-county West Texas. Most of my students would c...
Moses and the Fugitive Hero Pattern March 18, 2025
The story of Moses follows a pattern that is typical of ancient Near Eastern fugitive hero narratives. However, when Moses goes to Mount Horeb, the plot deviates from the usual “divine encounter” feature. What does this tell us about the composition ...
The Mary Underground March 18, 2025
A visit to Mary’s tomb outside Jerusalem in no way exhausts Christianity’s underground dimensions. The next day I found myself in Bethlehem. The journey from Jerusalem into Palestinian territory itself entails a descent into relative poverty. Then th...
