Essay The politics of piety November 07, 2024 Christianity is often viewed as an alternative to Roman religion. But in many ways, Christianity was an expression of Roman religion. Read More
Essay Augustine and slavery September 04, 2024 Augustine is America’s public theologian again. Digging deeper into Augustine’s thought reveals why Augustinian Christian Nationalism is unviable. Read More
Reading List In celebration of the simple act of listening July 18, 2024 World Listening Day is an opportunity for all of us to pause and hone our awareness of the world around us and practice the art of listening. Read More
Essay Forging an American vision of Jewish masculinity April 11, 2024 When we think of Jewish masculinity in the United States, our imagination likely conjures up the quintessential nebbish: the neurotic, bookish, geeky intellectual type: think Woody Allen or, more recently, Seth Rogen or even Timothée Chalalemet. Read More
Essay Christian nationalism, Christian globalism and White Americans October 21, 2022 Christian Nationalism’s threat to a healthy democracy is a popular topic these days, and with good reason. But few of the many excellent books and articles on the topic explain its origins. Read More
Podcast Listening to the desert October 18, 2022 Deserts are among the most deeply evocative landscapes in the world. They inspire fear and awe, devotion and revulsion, fascination and longing. Read More
Podcast Sonorous Desert August 17, 2022 For the hermits and communal monks of antiquity, the desert was a place to flee the cacophony of ordinary life in order to hear and contemplate the voice of God. But these monks discovered something surprising in their harsh desert surroundings: far from empty and silent, the desert is richly reverberant. Read More
Podcast Listen in: Sonorous Desert July 19, 2022 For the hermits and communal monks of antiquity, the desert was a place to flee the cacophony of ordinary life in order to hear and contemplate the voice of God. But these monks discovered something surprising in their harsh desert surroundings: far from empty and silent, the desert is richly reverberant. Read More
Essay Life-changing doubt, the Internet, and a crisis of authority June 01, 2022 Yisroel was an earnestly pious boy growing up Hasidic in Brooklyn, New York. With his side curls grazing his shoulders, thick plastic glasses, and big black velvet yarmulke, he looked like all the other boys in his yeshiva, where he studied the Torah and its commentaries from early in the morning until late at night. Read More
Interview Book Club Pick: Out of Many Faiths May 02, 2022 America is the most religiously diverse nation on the planet. In today’s volatile climate of religious conflict and distrust, how do we affirm that the American promise is deeply intertwined with how each of us engages with people of different beliefs? Read More
Interview Nomi M. Stolzenberg and David N. Myers on American Shtetl February 10, 2022 Settled in the mid-1970s by a small contingent of Hasidic families, Kiryas Joel is an American town with few parallels in Jewish history—but many precedents among religious communities in the United States. Read More
Interview Meir M. Bar-Asher on Jews and the Qur’an January 12, 2022 In this panoramic and multifaceted book, Meir Bar-Asher examines how Jews and Judaism are depicted in the Qur’an and later Islamic literature, providing needed context to those passages critical of Jews that are most often invoked to divide Muslims and Jews or to promote Islamophobia. Read More
Essay The world of Martin Luther May 25, 2021 The nineteenth century commemorated the Protestant hero Martin Luther with giant statues on a host of town squares across Germany. Read More
Interview Book Club Pick: The Preacher’s Wife March 04, 2021 This month’s Book Club Pick is The Preacher’s Wife by Kate Bowler. In this book, Bowler tells the story of an important new figure that has appeared on the center stage of American evangelicalism—the celebrity preacher’s wife. Read More
Podcast Listen in: The Jefferson Bible December 15, 2020 In his retirement, Thomas Jefferson edited the New Testament with a penknife and glue, removing all mention of miracles and other supernatural events. Read More
