Use this page to scroll back through over 800 previous entries across several topics and disciplines. See the various subject matter pages for content selected for specific disciplines.
Why Global Churches Struggle Over LGBT Rights: Some African church leaders who refuse to accept gay rights have described the assumption that they’d fall in line with American and European evolving understandings of sexuality as being akin to a colonial-era decree to “civilize” the benighted darker races. The debate over whether to accept LGBT Christians as full […]
30 Years After Explosion, Challenger Engineer Still Blames Himself: A shuttle engineer for the Challenger has carried a burden of guilt for thirty years. Says Bob Ebeling, “That was one of the mistakes God made. He shouldn’t have picked me for that job. But next time I talk to him, I’m gonna ask him, ‘Why me? You […]
Mount St. Mary’s and the future of Catholic higher education: Over the past two decades, Catholic colleges have found themselves at the center of an intense discussion about what it really means to be a Catholic institution of higher education. And there remain numerous approaches to this question. This essay from a Religion prof at […]
Waste not, hunger not: Forty percent of the food produced in the U.S. ends up in landfills. Meanwhile, people are hungry. Daily Table tries to address both problems. Two questions and a caveat: How does Daily Table manage to sell fresh food at such inexpensive prices? Why does Daily Table sell food instead of giving it away? There are […]
Miss Marple and the Problem of Modern Identity: This is a story in which several characters are not — or may not be — who they say they are. Agatha Christie’s character and amateur detective, Miss Marple, explains why the problem of identity is a particularly significant one for them, situated in their particular time and place. Alan Jacobs […]
Three Myths About the Crusades and What They Mean for Christian Witness: Paul Robinson sorts through the news, media, literature, and film portrayals of the Crusades to examine the fiction in the popular imagination and provide some alternate informed discussion. Helpful for classes in history, journalism, and media.
The Secret Ingredient of Our Poverty Relief: Economists are showing that hope makes a statistical difference in developing nations but that hope comes in two forms. Wishful hope or “hope that” is important but lacks human agency. We hope that something will happen, but believe we have little or no influence over it. Aspirational hope, or “hope […]
EEOC Fiscal Year 2015 Enforcement and Litigation Data: In fiscal 2015, the agency received 89,385 charges of workplace discrimination. Of those, only 3,502 (3.9%) charged religious discrimination. A further breakdown of the data shows that the EEOC found no reasonable cause in 68% of the cases of alleged religious discrimination.
The Einstein-Bergson Debate: In their 1922 debate, Bergson held that relativity was not a theory that addressed time on its most fundamental, philosophical level but a theory about clocks and their behavior. Bergson called Einstein out for missing the distinction. Bergson was not criticizing Einstein’s theory. He was attacking a philosophy being passed off as part of […]
A Seismic Shift in Bioethics: How moral norms trump even scientific evidence and technology — This position paper can serve as an introduction or polemic piece for examining how scientific and technological developments influence social norms and ethical perspectives. Useful for courses in bioethics, science and technology, sociology, religion, and business.
