The author explores the result of endless choice. It is not only overload, but a profound loss of unity, solidity, and coherence in life.

In practice it undermines the transformation of faith. When Christians concentrate their time and energy on their own separate spheres and their own institutions-whether all-absorbing megachurches, Christian yellow-page businesses, or womb-to-tomb Christian cultural ghettoes-they lose...

[Some people are called to medicine; others are called to the priesthood. Still others, like Casey Sheehan, are called to put on a uniform, pick up a gun, and defend their country in times of...

What is undeniable is that when comforts and convenience sap our energies and idealism, inactivity secretes sloth in to our minds like a poison in the blood.

Jesus called for nothing like this, and Pat Robertson sounded more like one of the radical imams.

There is no problem with the wider culture that you cannot see in the spades in the Christian Church. The rot is in us, and not simple out there. And Christians are making a great...

Peter Berger, one of my mentors in sociology, remarked that the United States is a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes, … By that he meant that the American people are as religious as the...

A question is far more subversive, biblically, than a statement.

In the sorry ranks of the revisionists, the loss of anything identifiably Christian is now almost complete,

We are not wise enough, pure enough, or strong enough to aim and sustain such a single motive over a lifetime. That way lies fanaticism or failure. But if the single motive is the master...

The aim is to truly reach the gatekeepers, those who are astride the doorways of influence and power,

In other words, we are never freer than when we become most ourselves, most human, most just, most excellent, and the like.

Surrender to the spirit of the age,

Calling resists privatization by insisting on the totality of faith. Calling resists politicization by demanding a tension with every human allegiance and association. Calling resists polarization by requiring an attitude toward, and action in, society...

At that point the creed becomes a way of saying what the infidel next door believes, too.

We betray our modern arrogance and forget the place of mystery in God’s dealing with us.

To come to faith on the basis of experience alone is unwise, though not so foolish as to reject faith altogether because of lack of experience … the quality of a Christian’s experience depends on...

Culturally, one of the best arguments we can make is, wait and see.

If ours is an examined faith, we should be unafraid to doubt. If doubt is eventually justified, we were believing what clearly was not worth believing. But if doubt is answered, our faith has grown...