Many American universities were founded as religious institutions, explicitly designed to cultivate their students’ spiritual and moral natures. But over the course of the 20th century they became officially or effectively secular. Religious rituals like mandatory chapel services were dropped. Academic research and teaching replaced
There may be a measure of angst for some Catholics over the new Pew Forum Study in anticipation of the papal visit. Despite its title — “U.S. Catholics Open to Non-Traditional Families” – only half of the findings were related to hot-button issues, but the
A feud over theology has led an unusual ecumenical project in a small Arizona town. Eight churches—including Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and non-denominational congregations—in Fountain Hills have teamed up for a campaign of public banners and sermons aimed at the theology of a nearby Methodist church.
St. Thomas Aquinas, citing Aristotle, once wrote: “a small error at the outset can lead to great errors in the final conclusions.” What he means is that given the nature of reason, if any one of your premises is mistaken, no matter how trivial it
Ancient Israel had a practice of “gleaning”, i.e., gathering food. It can be seen in Ruth 2 where Ruth gleaned the fields of Boaz to provide food for her mother in law Naomi and herself. The Mosaic code makes provisions for the poor, the fatherless,
This column reminds us that people are always processing new “data”. St. Paul urges us to preach in season and out of season. His reason, no doubt, is that we never know where people are in their relationship with God or in their capacity to
Netflix has just announced a new policy that relates to maternity and paternity leave. This change allows new parents to take as much paid time off as they want in the first year after their child’s birth or adoption. Tawni Cranz, chief talent officer at
Op-ed from NYTimes.com Winston-Salem, N.C. — MY mind was absorbed by the biochemistry of gene editing when the text messages and Facebook posts distracted me. So sorry about Cecil. Did Cecil live near your place in Zimbabwe? Cecil who? I wondered. When I turned on
I’m going to start here by saying that I don’t feel particularly protective of this particular big game hunting dentist (but I do feel for his wife and kids). There are hunters in my family, bow-hunters even, but they do the hunting themselves, and there’s
Over my lifetime, I have seen the unthinkable not only become thinkable but applauded and made the law of the land. One reason this has happened is that many Christians were afraid to restate the obvious. We assumed that people saw things as clearly as
