This article is excerpted from Steve’s book Hints of Hope: Essays on Making Peace with the Proximate, available at Hearts and Minds Bookstore as well as elsewhere. And the doors clanged shut, which is very sobering… The few times I have walked in, I have walked out. A long time ago now, I was asked...
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Umbilically-connected. After many years of marriage, I have slowly seen that my wife Meg’s soul is bound up with the souls of her children. It cannot be otherwise, and while it is always wonderfully and sometimes painfully complex, it is the way it is and ought to be. As it is for everyone everywhere. Set...
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Early on a Sunday morning in East Harlem, a young couple and their two daughters wait for the elevator up to the second-floor space where their church meets above the neighborhood laundromat. Their youngest, dressed in all white, sleeps–for now–peacefully in her stroller. Sundays like this have become especially meaningful, not only because they gather...
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Scripture, as God’s good word to his creation, is beautiful and challenging in its depiction of humanity and our call to faithfulness in the world. The Bible paints a compelling picture of creation as inherently good, and yet deeply marred and distorted by the reality of sin. With the entrance of sin to our world,...
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As an ordained minister within the Presbyterian Church in America, I “sincerely received and adopted the Confession of Faith and the Catechisms of this Church.” This is a reference to the Westminster Confession of Faith and the accompanying Westminster Shorter and Larger Catechisms. To many readers not from a confessional background, this may seem strange. ...
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The relationship between the culture and politics is complex and subtle, so it’s worth saying something about each, starting with culture. Culture involves far more than what we traditionally think of as politics – for example, art, music, entertainment, social institutions, and customs — whereas politics is one aspect of the work of government and...
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