Faith
Abraham and the Stranger at Sodom and Gomorrah
Why were Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed? The answer provides a path that may help heal our relationships and our nation.
Stephen O. Smoot
August 5, 2021
Why were Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed? The answer provides a path that may help heal our relationships and our nation.
If journalists had greater religious literacy, they could have predicted and addressed religious concerns that vaccine passports resembled the mark of the beast rather than resorting to ridicule.
This month, passages about the most potent moral figure in Western culture, the influences on Augustine,
and the enduring wisdom of the prophet Jeremiah.
The Jewish holiday of Purim honors Queen Esther, who risked the wrath of her Persian husband-king to save her people. This essay is a tribute to women who have risked much to witness both anciently and in our day.
An institutional lens is useful for thinking about Israel as the unfolding “Kingdom of God,” since it is a durable, multifaceted social structure that has been important for thousands of years.
The forces of contention may have just escalated to a new and even more feverish pitch as a result of the election disputes and the breach of the Capitol building in Washington.
This month, passages on rebirth, the pursuit of utopia, why we are commanded to honor parents, the importance of welcoming a God who can contradict us, and the need to embrace interfaith solidarity.
To the extent there is a war on Christmas our best approach is to simply live an authentic Christian life out loud.
At Christmas we often focus on the joy of Christ, but just as important is the way that Christ embraces our sorrows and heals our wounds.
The battle with sin is our shared inheritance. Nobody is immune to a fall from grace. We must pray that our Father “suffer us not to be led into temptation” and then live to make that a reality.
Lots of people read lots of things these days. But it’s a very different kind of reading than before. Here’s why that should worry us.
If we write off the Bible as irrelevant, we lose its proposals on meaning, purpose and self-worth. Other widely embraced answers, however, are despairing.