Samuel Wells

The debate about Scottish independence fits neatly into the categories the academic discipline of ethics likes to produce.

"Sam!" she says. She's greeting me as if I changed her life. Unfortunately, I haven't a clue who she is.

Rowan Williams favors a kind of secularism that requires an honest broker to mediate and manage genuine difference, rather than one that aspires to little more than maximized choice.

Maybe this is your real prayer for others and for yourself. “Make this trial and tragedy a glimpse of your glory, a window into your world.”

I return to this book more than almost any other because it reminds me why I’m a priest, what the church is, and how God is at work in places before I ever show up. Donovan shows me that what has become the ritual of worship is really a pattern of practices that are needed to remake community and shape society. 

Vivaldi wrote his Magnificat for a choir of female orphans to sing for their supper. They were truly singing Mary's song.

After two years, I visited my ailing friend. Eventually, he asked for the Eucharist—and suddenly every word mattered.

I have conversations with a wide variety of clergy colleagues. But they're all the same conversation: "Is it well with your soul?"

I asked Michael's mother what it was like to say goodbye. "Oh, it wasn't much fun," she said. Then she told me what she put in the coffin.

I asked an older English woman who left the church long ago why she now wants to come back. Her response made the color drain from my face.

When I open the sanctuary doors in the morning, I see the face of Christ in the shadow side of the welfare state.

American culture focuses on the law. But Naboth's vineyard reminds us that a healthy society is about relationships first and rules second.

I recently spent a night on the streets of London. I had two companions, who wondered if I was checking up on them in some way.

Here’s the thing about Jürgen Moltmann. Almost everything he says, you feel you’ve read somewhere before. Now there could be two explanations for this. One, that he’s a creature of fashion: that, like everyone, he speaks out on the environment; on the analogy between the discourse on human rights and the relation to soil, sea and sky; on justice for the oppressed; on God’s coming future. Or two, that he’s a creator of fashion.

Of the rewriting Christ and Culture there shall be no end. Miroslav Volf is too sophisticated a theologian to rehash or imitate H. Richard Niebuhr's celebrated fivefold schema, but A Public Faith remains in the shadow of Niebuhr's defining work.  

Does Jeffrey Stout's church have a god? One might say his god is democracy. But surely democracy is an ethic rather than a theology.

The three readings for this Sunday have few obvious connections. But they do each point to forms of holiness: Genesis points to vocation, Romans points to faith, and John points to rebirth.

Faith, birth, vocation: our readings offer us profound, intimidating terms for thinking about what it means to be in relationship with God.