People who know such things—social psychologists, culture watchers and historians—have referred to Millennials (the generation born after 1981) as potentially the greatest generation since, well, “the Greatest Generation,”comparing favorably to the crop of people that pulled the United States...

I used to accompany church youth groups on spring break trips to Florida—beaches and Bible studies, theme parks and service projects, hormones and holiness, that sort of thing. Our evening programs were largely dependent on the talents the kids brought with them, and consequently the content of the...

I would have killed to have been a fly on the wall at the pitch for 24, which recently ended its eight-season run. I would have liked to be there when the writers sat down with the producers to sell them the show. Beyond the accidentals—the ticking clock, the graphic violence, the pained expression...

A friend of mine sent me the following e-mail the other day: Did you attend this event? That’s it: no “Dear Dave” or “Your BFF, Eric.” He’s not a talker, that guy. But, as a matter of fact, I did attend that event in question, the Chicago leg of Peter Rollins’s...

When my wife is upset, my cats start fighting. It’s pretty fascinating, actually. My wife has a reasonably high-stress job—she’s a therapist, with lots of marriage counseling and families in crisis—and sometimes she needs to process her day. She describes the dynamics of a particularly stressful...

There was a moment in time when I was really, really into Vaclav Havel. He had only recently spearheaded the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, in which the oppressive Soviet-sponsored government was peacefully overthrown. He had more recently served as guest editor of Civilization, a magazine briefly...

Some time ago I found myself in Denver for a conference. Knowing absolutely nobody, I set myself down in an open chair at a session, next to this guy who was decked out to the nines in punk uniform. Leather, studs, chains, tattoos, piercings, hair dye, mohawk—he jangled whenever he shifted in his seat....

You might have thought that the British would have stopped colonizing the United States sometime before 1776, when fledgling American nationalists declared their independence—or at least by 1815, when the War of 1812 ended and U.S. control of the land was firmly established. But I learned recently...

I’ll be the first to admit that, all things considered, I prefer comfort to discomfort, security to insecurity. I’m not sure, however, that these are reasonable expectations, or even aspirations, for a person of faith. One of the more resonant ideas I came across while reading Jean Vanier’s...

John Wesley is said to have employed four tools in his theological work, which have come to be called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral: Scripture, Reason, Tradition, Experience. Scripture, according to Wesley, is the first and final authority in any such quest for wisdom. The other three are equal seconds...