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Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Christmas

Rachel’s Reward: A Review of The Night of the Hunter

Thus says the Lord: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more” (Jer 31:15). The Night of the Hunter belongs on every Christian’s Christmas list. My family has even…

by Brian McLainDecember 30, 2025
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Advent

Angels, Angels, and More Angels

One important part of Jesus's birth narrative is the presence of angels. The angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary, announcing that she would bear a son. And then, on the night Jesus was born, a whole host of angels appeared to the shepherds. Angels are mysterious creatures to us.…

by Adam McIntoshDecember 24, 2025
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Culture

Devilish Irony: The Blind Service of The Satanic Temple

I was settled nicely into my chair and listening to the conversation in an undergrad religion seminar, my last required course to graduate. Though a few Christians sat scattered around the room, the course itself was dedicated to poking holes in traditional understandings of the Bible: our readings deconstructed notions…

by Alexander HibbsDecember 18, 2025
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Christmas

The Typology of Home Alone

God’s symbols belong to Him and to His people. They are constantly at work in the world, including the world of film, music, painting, architecture, and other artforms. You cannot escape God’s symbols or the meaning He has woven into the created order. Artists use and borrow God’s symbols, whether…

by Brian MoatsDecember 17, 2025
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Theology

The Old Testament’s Multiethnic Israel

For centuries, Christians identified Israel in the Old Testament as a single, literal ethnic group, often called “the Jews.” Even supersessionists – those who believed the Church superseded Israel – assumed the clear-cut, technical definition of “Israel” in the Bible is the ethnic group. However, a deeper dive into Genesis,…

by John CarpenterDecember 9, 2025
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Matthew

Mission Accomplished: John the Baptizer and the Highway to Holiness (Matthew 11:1–6)

Misreading Intent In the opening verses of Matthew 11, the reader is confronted immediately by John the baptizer who has been imprisoned since 4:12. John poses a question to Jesus, inquiring from prison as to whether or not he is Israel’s awaited Messiah or if they should anticipate another: “Are…

by Jonathan SedlakDecember 2, 2025
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The Sentence

Bernard Malamud said, “The sentence as object - treat it like a piece of sculpture.”

December 28, 2007
History

Protestants and Catholics

Benjamin Kaplan’s recent Divided by Faith reveals (in the words of the Economist reviewer) that “there was more religious freedom in the 16th century than after the wars of religion ended a century later. The author tells of the widespread use of Auslauf , whereby Protestants were able to worship…

December 28, 2007

Bhutto’s death

In a Stratfor report on terrorism in 2008, distributed on December 19, Fred Burton and Scott Stewart predict: “Just over the border from Afghanistan, Pakistan has witnessed the rapid spread of Talibanization. As a result, Islamabad now is fighting a jihadist insurgency of its own in the Federally Administered Tribal…

December 28, 2007

Bhutto’s death

In a Stratfor report on terrorism in 2008, distributed on December 19, Fred Burton and Scott Stewart predict: “Just over the border from Afghanistan, Pakistan has witnessed the rapid spread of Talibanization. As a result, Islamabad now is fighting a jihadist insurgency of its own in the Federally Administered Tribal…

December 28, 2007
History

Doors

Malidoma Patrice Some writes that in the African village where he grew up “houses do not have doors that can be locked. They have entrances. The absence of doors is not a sign of technological deprivation but an indication of the state of mind the community is in. The open…

December 27, 2007
History

McDonaldization

McDonald’s is one of the emblems of the bogeyman, globalization. In an essay on McDonald’s in Moscow, Melissa L. Caldwell complicates this picture in a number of ways. In a number of ways, “McDonald’s has been more fully domesticated” and thus has “lost its distinctiveness as something alien and visible…

December 27, 2007

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