Richard Lischer
The shape of ashes
To say "earth to earth" is a good thing, we have to believe it's really going to happen.
Following Martin
What happened to the civil rights movement? David Chappell offers a carefully wrought study of a nation's fitful waking from a beautiful dream.
Letters and Papers from Prison
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison comes under the category of “Books to Be Read on an Annual Basis”—like Augustine’s Confessions, King Lear, or anything by Flannery O’Connor. In general, we read too many books and return to too few.
Another grief observed
Julian Barnes’s attempt to console himself with “It’s just the universe doing its stuff” recalls C.S. Lewis’s recoil from the “goodness” of God.
Legends of the game
Baseball continues to receive elegiac tributes. John Sexton's latest joins company with the works of some impressive lovers of the game.
A book’s life: One reader to another
When you buy a used book, it's like joining a conversation in progress—a conversation that may outlast you.
The New Measures: A Theological History of Democratic Practice
Not long ago the New York Times carried a story about a California congregation that maintains three separat...
Odd job: The secret gift of ministry
According to new findings in the Pulpit & Pew National Clergy Survey, a solid majority of clergy is deeply satisfied with the pastoral ministry....
Peculiar people
One of my favorite lines in modern "religious" fiction comes from Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood....
King's dream
Malcolm X characterized "I Have a Dream" as a feel-good exercise designed for white consumption. But there was nothing soft or accommodating about Martin Luther King's speech.
Repeat performance: Making preaching come alive
Preachers are like comedians. They are always looking for new material....
A week of signs: The first seven days of a pastor
In his memoir Open Secrets, Richard Lischer tells of his search for a pastoral vocation in “New Cana,” a small town in southern Illinois....
Preaching to America
This splendid and judiciously selected collection of sermons begins and ends in the promised land. Puritan Robert Cushman's sermon is the earliest extant sermon preached on American soil and the first to be printed. Given in Plymouth in 1621, it launches the American quest for the promised land with a heartfelt appeal to communal love and care.
We have seen the Lord (John 20:1-18)
"Were you there?" asks the song. No, no one was.
A sense of ending
In the 2,200 pages of Boswell's Life of Johnson, the protagonist's death is dispensed with in 36 pages.
Acknowledgment (John 9:1-41)
"You can't be born again," I said, "you're a Lutheran. You are the chairman of the board of trustees."
Strangers in the night: John 4:5-42
Only one who loves you knows your deepest desires.
Pick it up, read it: John 3:1-17
Embracing Jesus as the Christ means becoming a new person, not a better one.