
Resisting the Single Story: What Advent Teaches About Power
By Laurie Nichols
Every powerful system has a way of telling its own story.
It tells us who matters, who gets to speak, and who should stay quiet. It rewards certainty and punishes nuance.
This Online Articles area (formerly our Library) gathers reflections, op-eds, and essays that engage the pressing questions of faith, justice, and public life. Here, you’ll find hundreds of thoughtful and engaging pieces from scholars, practitioners, and everyday Christians — leaders and writers who bring fresh insight and faithful imagination. These articles are meant to spark deeper discipleship, fuel courageous action, and equip the church to embody the gospel in a complex world. We invite you to explore, learn, and join the ongoing conversation toward a fuller expression of Christian faithfulness and a more just society.
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By Laurie Nichols
Every powerful system has a way of telling its own story.
It tells us who matters, who gets to speak, and who should stay quiet. It rewards certainty and punishes nuance.

By Jon Carlson
When pastors pretend to be style icons, they’re carrying on a long lineage that erroneously equates material wealth with divine blessing.
GQ first noticed the trend in 2015, then again in 2017: celebrity pastors outfitting themselves in incredibly trendy—and incredibly expensive—designer streetwear.

By Ed Cyzewski
At the start of the morning work at his monastery, author and monk Thomas Merton made the following observation about the newest members of his Trappist order:

By Dale D. Gehman
In the book Beating Guns, authors Shane Claiborne and Mennonite blacksmith Michael Martin take a frank look at our country with regards to gun violence. In their thirty-seven-city Beating Guns Tour, Shane and Michael feature the live transformation of a gun into a garden tool at each stop…and mix worship, song, prayer, art, and stories as a call to look into our own hearts and see that this is not only a gun issue but a heart issue.

By Benjamin Capps
For those of you who have already failed on your Lenten commitments, I want you to know, I’m with you.
By now it is probably evident, even to the most occasional of church attenders, that we have thoroughly entered into the long, somber, and glorious tunnel of Lent.

By Ed Cyzewski
The first time I attempted to pray in silence, I struggled to sit still for 15 minutes, saw no results, and then thought to myself, “Well, that didn’t work.”
As it turns out, writer and activist Thomas Merton had me pegged a few decades earlier:

By Elrena Evans
The year my eldest daughter was in kindergarten, she began bugging me to take her to the Maundy Thursday foot-washing service at our church six weeks before the event.

By José Humphreys
I love the local church, with all its hopes, dreams, and beautiful letdowns. Like a good dojo, she can be a rigorous space for learning how to love—a space for knowing God more through the practice of loving others well.

By Alexia Salvatierra and Peter Heltzel
Organizing is exhausting. The forces of injustice are often ruthless and so well-funded that they have replacements ready to go each time a foot soldier tires.

By Manuel Luz
My teenage son, Justin, had been invited to an area church by a friend. Since he had grown up as a pastor’s kid and had never been to a megachurch like this before, I wondered what impression it might give him.

By Brian Wigg
Pornography doesn’t love you and it never will.
I have no doubts about the nature of pornography. It is utterly without value. Yet, sadly, I am drawn to it like a fly to manure.

By Ed Cyzewski
The apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians, “And let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart” (Galatians 6:9). That’s easy for him to write, but how should we counter the weariness of doing good and serving others?

By David Clough
The On Animals North American book tour is complete! In numbers: 31 days, lectures and seminars at 21 venues, combined audience of over 1000, 9 institutional food policy meetings, well over 100 books distributed.

By Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon
What does it mean to have Persistent Hope in the midst of disappointment and despair? Throughout the 40 days of Lent, this is the theme I am wrestling with, praying through, and seeking to understand as we wait together and long for Easter morning.

By Ed Cyzewski
I once read how the leader of a well-known Christian charity took his position, more or less kicking and screaming, after years of working in the corporate world.

By Shane Claiborne and Michael Martin
It’s been said that you can count the number of seeds in an apple but you can’t count the number of apples in a seed. We live in a world of abundant life, where one apple can produce hundreds of offspring.

By Lenora Rand
Ok, maybe not everything…
But, yeah, a lot of stuff is broken. An awful lot.
Big stuff. Little stuff. Little stuff that feels like big stuff.