The conscience is a communal organ—a way of knowing that we do with others formed always in reference to others.
Virtually every church tradition, by theology, interpretive strategies, or pastoral practice, makes accommodations for divorced people who seek to remarry. These accommodations permit divorced people to enter unions that are outside the rule laid dow...
I have learned that there's no way to open yourself to the experience of God while retaining your cool, your sense of ironic detachment.
The demands of acceptance require us to maintain a relationship of honor and respect with those with whom we may ardently disagree. We accept the fact that our convictions on this matter differ, and those with whom we differ hold their convictions, a...
Over four decades of pastoral ministry—I got started early—you make mistakes. But the mistakes you most regret are the ones that obscure the gospel and hurt the people you love, by saying in effect, "You do not belong," to those for whom Christ d...
We so want to be right and so trust that our desire to be right is something that God would surely bless. Yet the desire to be right comes with a price: the fear of being wrong. And so, in a counter-intuitive way, this focus on being right seems to b...
I love you, but I hate your overeating" doesn’t help a marriage. It's not helpful because hatred is a powerful emotion (a posture, really) that is not easy to wield or maintain carefully. Hatred is more a bludgeon than a scalpel. Our ability to dis...
In the deepest, most central place of our being, we don't want to cross God and our not wanting to is the beginning of wisdom.
If we have a hair trigger on the exclusion gun, shouldn't it be aimed at those who are using their power to abuse someone who is in a weaker, more vulnerable position?
For too long, our controversies seem to boil down to conservatives and liberals (or, if you prefer, traditionalists and progressives) talking past each other for the benefit of stirring up their loyalists, as partisans do in the primary campaigns of ...
