Recent mass shootings have reminded us of just how much gun violence has surged since Covid. The record of 45,222 Americans dying from gun-related injuries in the first year of the pandemic could well be topped in 2022, with more than 12,000 fatally shot since the end of April. Many rightly condemn progressive district attorneys in cities for failing …
For anyone who took a college course in psychology more than a decade ago or who is even casually acquainted with the subject through popular articles, a close examination of today’s field would undoubtedly prove surprising. The science that for most of the 20th century portrayed itself as the enlightened alternative to organized religion has …
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, …
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 …