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.
Explaining Mormons and Their Idiosyncratic View of Religious Liberty offers an interpretation of what some commentators see as an inconsistency in Mormon social policy. Rather than dreaming of imposing ideas on society as a whole, the LDS offer the wider polity a tradeoff: we will support established authority and recognize its right to enforce the law […]
The Science for Seminaries project assists professors and scientists to enable faith leaders to engage with science throughout their ministries. The 10 schools participating in the science for seminaries project include Catholics, evangelical/conservative Protestants and mainline Protestants. “The goal is for schools to present science fairly and accurately, not to ensure that future pastors side with […]
Young Adult Ambassador Essays: (The download takes about 30 sec., click to open about 2 min.) Four students have been published by the Free to be Faithful initiative in essays addressing religious liberty and themes related to the two kingdoms. The writers include Isaiah Armbrecht (Concordia University, Nebraska), Bethany Glock (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) , […]
Miroslav Volf at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture: In a globalized world, the terror of God’s crazy-eyed followers is threatening lives, peace and prosperity of everyone on the planet. We are tempted to conclude: The sooner that humanity either eradicates or quarantines off religion, the better our world will be. This conclusion would […]
This manual from the Church & Tax Store “clearly presents comparisons on key compensation components for 15 church positions from choir director to pastor to administrator. Based on national survey results, the compensation profiles are classified by part-time, full-time, church size, income budget, and geographical setting.”
In “The Reading Cure,” Gabe Haley asks, “How can a seven-hundred-year-old poem have such a profound effect on a twenty-first-century reader?” Dante’s Divine Comedy is, among other things, a work of speculative fiction. Because Dante’s vision of the future is of the afterlife, its present conditions have the potential to encompass times outside of Dante’s […]
“Is There Prayer on Mars?” is an essay on Andy Weir’s book, The Martian, that considers the positivist worldview of the book (and perhaps the movie). Students can consider this example as a representation of an outlook distinctly different from the sort of narrative that would be informed by the Bible. There is no traditional religious significance in […]
Researcher, author, and professor Allan Carlson maintains that the U.S. culture never stays in a moral morass for more than a few generations. He cites four distinct periods of family strength and renewal and four distinct periods of family decline since 1630. “There’s going to be another renewal because we human beings—not just we Americans, but […]
The Institute of Religious Studies at Baylor University, hosted by The National Press Club, examines the statistics and survey reports about religion in the U.S. and what some critics are calling “the secularization myth.” Although surveys have found a decline in membership for Mainline denominations, many actually changed to other denominations from which they grew up in. Yet […]
The NYT piece covers a current sexting case, “Hundreds of Nude Photos Jolt Colorado School,” and the Mercator article offers some commentary: “Lessons from a sexting scandal.” This case is one of several over the past few years that perplex authorities and may serve as an exemplar for how the culture is now at a […]
