One spring, a friend called and asked my husband, our son, and me to be in a music video. It would be played at an upcoming awards show behind a relatively unknown band, MercyMe, as they sang a song that was climbing the charts, “I Can Only Imagine.” Sounds glamorous. But this wasn’t an invitation R
Most of us have been reading headlines about the Strait of Hormuz, chokepoint for much of the world’s oil. Let’s talk about an intellectual strait likely to be the most significant epistemological shift in all of history. We are going from acquiring knowledge directly from primary human sources to a
Here’s a solution to homelessness: Give every homeless person an apartment! But the past and present of this approach suggest its simplicity is not paired with the realism, prudence, or community that will truly help many who are homeless. Throughout much of the 20th century, compassionate Americans
Christ is the ultimate model of gentle strength. He didn’t hold his tongue before the Sanhedrin or Pilate. He said, “For this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37, ESV throughout). His entire ministry was public. He proclaimed the kingdom on hillsides, in syna
In the spring of 2022, Justice Samuel Alito wrote the most politically polarizing judicial opinion of his entire career. The issue was abortion, a subject that had long divided the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative appointed by President George W. Bush, wanted the court to is
On September 30, Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville made headlines for the horrific botched execution of Christa Pike. It was not the first botched execution at Riverbend: In May, the state’s attempt to execute Tony Carruthers failed, causing Gov. Bill Lee to offer him a one-year re
Whenever diaspora Burmese Christians gathered in Boston, they would drive up to the 18th-century white colonial-style house on 145 Main Street in Malden, Massachusetts, where Baptist missionary Adoniram Judson was born and lived for the first four and a half years of his life. They’d snap a quick pi
As a sociologist of religion, I’ve had a front-row seat to the explosive growth of debate over Christian nationalism in America. Early on, I thought the concept was a helpful one. Like many, I was troubled and bewildered by widespread conservative Christian support for Donald Trump, a man whose con
Any number of recent surveys indicate an upheaval in American Christianity. Political scientist Ryan Burge’s work, which has set the pace for several years now, alongside studies by the Pew Research Center and the Public Religion Research Institute, provides a sober assessment of what our congregati
This piece was adapted from CT’s books newsletter. Subscribe here. Gene Edward Veith Jr. and A. Trevor Sutton, Irreplaceable: Humanity, Vocation, and the Limits of Technology (Baker Books, 2026) Christians are writing a lot of books about technology at the moment. You can see why. Even before the ex