One unexpected compensation of the COVID-19 lockdown, the one which dwarfs all others, has been the opportunity to pay greater attention to the one place where religion has always told us we get closest to the spiritual reality beneath worldly appearances: our current situation. As it says in Jeremiah 23:23-24 – as it says, …
As Americans return to work under state variations of President Trump’s three-phase reopening plan, it will certainly be with a heightened sense of social responsibility. For many it will be enough to wear a mask and keep a healthy distance, but others will undoubtedly be seeking a more spiritual relationship with both their customers …
One of the clearest consequences of school vouchers, tax credits for private schooling and other programs that provide parents with a nonpublic option for educating their children, is the growing demand for parochial placements – and not just because of their relatively low cost. The bold 2007 prediction by the Journal of Urban Economics that …
Underneath the argument that only degreed professionals should have a say over how we respond to the current crisis is a false, if widely accepted, assumption about the knowledge these experts claim to possess. For once we get beyond the so-called “hard” sciences of physics and chemistry, much of what is accepted as experimentally …
Augustus Hopkins Strong, president and professor of theology at the Rochester Theological Seminary from 1872 until 1912, liked to tell the story of a young minister who once complained that all his projects, no matter how well-intentioned, always left him feeling moody and dissatisfied. Irritated and discouraged, he feared his studies had come …
As people around the world self-quarantine with no clear end in sight, there is a growing restiveness for which the predictable advice of catching up on long-deferred chores or finding something new on Netflix goes only so far. For those of us long accustomed to the convenience of cars, subways, planes, and trains, …
One more helpful suggestion from America’s early college presidents for dealing with coronavirus fear is not to let our increasing frustrations boil over into anger. Waiting in long lines to buy self-quarantine supplies—trying to manage tighter budgets in the wake of job uncertainty—discovering friends or family members have foolishly ignored infection precautions—these and …
It is largely forgotten today, but for nearly three centuries, from the founding of Harvard College in 1636 right up until the early twentieth century, there was a remarkably talented and insightful group of ministers whose lives were dedicated to teaching how to live spiritually, not just at home or in church, but …