Letters

Hearing Voices
How can you tell a prophet from a fruitcake? (Hint: If you're instructed to murder someone, be skeptical)
Tim Stafford

Thomas the Unbeliever
A new doubting Thomas finds few answers
Garrett Brown

Everything That Rises Must Converge
The inevitable and preordained trajectories of evolution.
by William Dembski

Pledging to Fight
Atheist says battle over 'under God' has just begun.
By John W. Kennedy

The Punk Rocker with a Ph.D.
Greg Graffin, frontman of Bad Religion, has a freshly minted doctorate in evolutionary biology and a new album coming soon.
by Preston Jones

Thomas the Unbeliever
A new doubting Thomas finds few answers
Garrett Brown

Books & Culture Corner: True Believers
Incoming! The McSweeney's crowd launches a new monthly.
Jeremy Lott

Editor's Bookshelf: Paradox Lost
Blessed Are the Cynical shows what happened to sin.
David Neff

Weblog: Catholic Bishops Embrace Ecumenical Group, Reject Bible Measure
Plus: The most inaccurate Christmas song ever, protecting kids from their evil, murderous parents, and other stories from online sources around the world.
Compiled by Ted Olsen

An Arts Festival in the Heartland
Bill Gaither has succeeded in putting together an event that increases Christ through the performers' diminishment.
By Mark Allen Powell

Weblog: Pope Warns Archbishop of Canterbury of Unity 'Difficulties'
"Meanwhile, Rowan Williams speaks of a clear sense of limits in the Anglican Communion"
Ted Olsen

NEWS BRIEFS

Sex and the Single Christian
No, chastity isn't archaic.
Agnes Howard

Weblog: Time Goes Gnostic
"Christmas, Carl Henry, more Gnostics, and other articles from online sources around the world"
Rob Moll

Christian History Corner: Breaking The Da Vinci Code
So the divine Jesus and infallible Word emerged out of a fourth-century power-play? Get real.
Collin Hansen

An Emperor of Art
The life and films of Akira Kurosawa.
by Carl Plantinga

The Death and Rebirth of Ivan Illich
A call to Christian conspiracy.
by Christopher Shannon

Whose Natural Theology?
Alan Jacobs

The Nazi Seduction
Why do Hitler and the Nazis continue to fascinate?
by Jean Bethke Elshtain

Christian History Corner: Learning From the Other 9/11
"Words kill. So teachers, watch what you say"
Chris Armstrong

Rabbit Trails to God
John Updike has made a career of writing the most theological novels in America
Mark A. Buchanan

The University Under the Microscope
There's hope for higher ed.
Edward E. Ericson, Jr.

Canterbury Crackup
Eschewing church discipline has come back to haunt Anglicans.
A Christianity Today editorial

Cheated by the Affirming Church
Contrary to what some churches teach, it is homosexuality—and not its suppression—that enslaves people like me.
by Anonymous

Black Theology Revisited
Two authors argue that this strain of liberation theology is as relevant as ever.
Reviewed by F. Burton Nelson

Network for the Alienated
Episcopal conservatives seek to reclaim wayward church.
By Douglas LeBlanc

Weblog: Call Them Hostages
"Shelter Now aid workers reportedly survive first attack, but young American Heather Mercer isn't doing well."
Ted Olsen

The Confidence Man
Meet Mark C. Taylor, the virtuoso of Nietzschean boosterism.
Eugene McCarraher

Too Much Choice?
On misdiagnosing the problem.
Andrew P. Morriss

Behold the Man
American Jesus
by Philip Jenkins

Ending It
Mercy killing at the movies.
Peter T. Chattaway

The Movies and America
What the Academy Award nominees for Best Picture tell us about ourselves.
Drew Trotter

Learning to Love Moses
The difference between meaning and truth.
An excerpt from Searching for God Knows What, by Donald Miller

Emergent Evangelism
The place of absolute truths in a postmodern world—two views.
By Brian McLaren and Duane Litfin

Lewis the Letter-Writer
An unconscious autobiography in two volumes of correspondence.
By Michael Ward

Wildheart
John Eldredge thinks too many Christians are weak, and churches are often insipid-and he's not going to take it anymore
By Douglas LeBlanc

The Invention of Modern Witchcraft
A surprising genealogy of neopaganism.
by Irving Hexham

"At No Time Conspicuous, as a Party, for Talent or Learning"
Newman and evangelicalism.
Grayson Carter

What Heresy?
The things Neo-Gnostic seekers find lacking in Christianity-experiential insight, mysticism, a direct link to God-are already there
Frederica Mathewes-Green

For Everything There Is a Season
Nostalgia for nature's seasons in a climate-controlled world.
by Cindy Crosby

The Punk Rocker with a Ph.D.
Greg Graffin, frontman of Bad Religion, has a freshly minted doctorate in evolutionary biology and a new album coming soon.
by Preston Jones

Inventing Evangelicalism
No one was more pivotal to the emerging movement than Carl F.H. Henry
Timothy George

More Oxygen to the Flame

Name It and Claim It

REFLECTIONS
Poisonous fruit

Letter from London
Susan Wise Bauer

Between Pacifism and Jihad
The just-war tradition reconsidered
J. Daryl Charles

Ancient Christian Commentary on Current Events: What Is War Good For?
What early church leaders thought of Christians and the military
Joel Elowsky

PLUS: Utopia or Kingdom Come?
Discerning wheat from chaff in the new business spirituality
Jeff M. Sellers

"Summer Turns Prehistoric, Pretty, and Pantheistic"
"Also, critics' responses to Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Legally Blonde, The Score, and other movies."
Jeffrey Overstreet

Eco-Myths
Don't believe everything you hear about the church and the environmental crisis.
"David N. Livingstone, Calvin B. DeWitt, and Loren Wilkinson"

More Oxygen to the Flame

REFLECTIONS
Poisonous fruit

Losing My Appetite for Cynicism

Tell Me the Old, Old Story—and Make It New
Apologetics for our time.
Lauren F. Winner

The Groves of Academe
A Pietist with a Ph.D.: Remembering Stanley J. Grenz
Roger E. Olson

My Emerging Guilt
With one hand still clutching the smoothie, I was pulled into the conga line. How did I get here, dancing, off beat and out of touch?
By Ron Benson

God Hidden and Wholly Revealed
Karl Barth, postmodernity, and evangelical theology
John R. Franke

Film Forum: A Wedding of Crass Jokes and Bad Filmmaking
"Critics try to forget American Wedding, Gigli, and Buffalo Soldiers. But Dirty Pretty Things wins applause as one of the summer's best films and Seabiscuit and Whale Rider get further examination. Plus: Debate about The Passion continues"
Jeffrey Overstreet

Beyond Virtue and Vice
"Some morals are absolute, but they are not ultimate"
Christianity Today Editorial

"At No Time Conspicuous, as a Party, for Talent or Learning"
Newman and evangelicalism.
Grayson Carter

Weblog: Satanism, Sans Satan
None injured in new Pakistan church bombing, and other stories from online sources from around the world
Ted Olsen

Bring on the Pentagrams
Schools wrestle with religious freedom in the classroom.
Ted Olsen

Weblog: Ravi Zacharias, Rich Mouw Speak in Mormon Tabernacle
Plus: Couple attempts to sacrifice children at church altar, the new head of the Catholic bishops' conference, a focus on Dobson, and other stories from online sources around the world.
Compiled by Ted Olsen

From Homer to Hip-Hop
The Jesuit scholar Walter Ong studied the evolution of human consciousness via the history of communication.
by Jeet Heer

Weblog: Kerry Told to Speak Up, Shut Up About Religion
Plus: British government debates spanking, Pope laments EU Constitution, and other sources from online sources around the world.
Compiled by Ted Olsen

Reaching the Post-Christian
They're today's non-seekers, who've seen Christianity and think they have reasons for rejecting it.
By Daniel Hill

How Nietzsche Found Jesus
Was the antichrist really religious?
Stephen N. Williams

Soul Language on Paper
Blue Like Jazz resonates with readers who grapple with the paradoxes of faith
Cindy Crosby

In Democracy We Trust
The conflicted loyalties of Christian antiliberals.
by Eugene McCarraher

The 19th Floor
Where did the ideas that shape our world begin?
Thomas Albert Howard

God & Mammon, Inc.

Dark Thoughts
Hoping that all will be saved.
Kevin Corcoran

The Ecstatic Heresy
Seeking a superficial unity, some denominational leaders opt for feelings over facts.
By Robert Sanders

Ragamuffin
The patched-up life and unshabby message of Brennan Manning.
By Agnieszka Tennant