One summer Sunday morning, the nine-person choir moved to the center of the chancel in our Maine island Methodist chapel, and the piano sounded the opening chords of John Stainer’s “God...

Almost thirty years ago I stood in Martin Luther’s study room, high in the Wartburg Castle, in the German state of Thuringia. On the wall was the famous ink stain, said...

One of the highest privileges of my life’s vocation as a minister is that of being present with people at the key moments of their lives. “Hatch, Match, and Dispatch”—an in-joke...

Now that we are retired, my wife, Mhairi, and I spend the summer months in our log cabin retreat on an island off the Maine coast. The cabin perches high above...

Immigrants seem to be at the center of attention these days, not only in my country but across the globe. When I read God’s words to Abram, “Go from your country...

“The Turning Point.” That’s what these verses might be called. Or “The Crossroads.” Until this point, things have gone steadily downhill. Our story, this scriptural history of humankind—the forbidden fruit in...

The account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness has been proclaimed on the first Sunday of Lent in Christian communities worldwide from as early as the fourth century. It impresses on...

In his “Spiritual Exercises,” sixteenth-century Basque soldier-turned-religious-seeker Ignatius of Loyola lays out a series of meditative practices focused on the life of Christ and designed to focus a person’s external and...

When we went with our children and grandchild for what would be our last visit to their godmother, she was confined to a hospital bed with her neck, broken in a...

For years I taught a World Religions course at a Jesuit Catholic university. Most of my undergraduate students came from homes in which a faith tradition, usually Christian, had shaped them....