November 1933, Hesse, Germany. The Bruderhof, a community of about 125 men, women, and children recently established on a farm in the Rhön Mountains, had just learned of a new mandate from the National Socialist government: all citizens must vote in a referendum to...
From Our Partners
The Holy Trinity, Race, and a Time of Crisis
Ken Herfst
Our societies are in the middle of a crisis. The pandemic is asking us to think about what it means to be human living in community—not only with other people but also with the rest of creation, including animals—especially if it’s true that the virus originated from...
Pick the Right Politics
Peter Mommsen
For those afflicted, it has all the compulsiveness of a guilty habit: repeatedly scanning news headlines; experiencing mood swings based on the latest polling data; responding to scandals, epidemics, or Wall Street gyrations by first wondering how it will affect the...
To Prevent Our Falling into Greater Disasters
Phil Christman
At one point in Adrienne Kennedy’s superb short play He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box, we hear a quotation that, in another context, might seem tailor-made for the tumult of this year. Here it is: “We must expect reverses, even defeats. They are sent to teach us...
Diversity and the Common Good
Natasha Sistrunk Robinson
Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. Romans 12:2 NLT “I don’t see colour.” I cringe every...
On Peacemaking
Robin Shaw
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Matthew 5:9) In 1994, over eight hundred thousand people were slaughtered in Rwanda. Members of the Tutsi tribe, together with those who sympathized with them, were brutally killed by members of the...
Against the Infinite Stimulus of Greed
Brad Littlejohn
I. Introduction In the clarion call of the Reformation, Luther writes, “man does not live for himself alone in this mortal body, in order to work on its account, but also for all men on earth; nay, he lives only for others and not for himself.” Because one of the...
Apart Together
Charles E. Moore
In Leo Tolstoy’s story “Master and Man,” Vasili Andreevich Brekhunov is a well-to-do Russian landowner intent on outdoing his competitors. He has his eye on some land just a few miles from his estate. Despite the danger of a threatened winter storm, he tells his...
What Is “the Church”?
Peter Kreeft
I. Matter and Spirit The first and most obvious answer to the question of my title is that the church is that funny-looking building on the corner. That’s not a wholly wrong answer. A building, like a church, has an identity. It gets its identity from its walls. Walls...
Inhabiting the Places of Promise
Michael Laffin
Discussions of Martin Luther’s writings on society, ethics, and politics in the English-speaking world tend to focus on his teaching concerning the two kingdoms, which divides authority into temporal and spiritual realms. Often overlooked is the larger theological...