Christians have adopted the word koinonia from the Greek New Testament, where it is translated as fellowship, communion, or partnership. It’s the word behind verses such as Acts 2:45, where the early church “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship,” and Philippians 1:5, when Paul prays with joy of “partnership in the gospel.”... Continue Reading

“Repentance in our Western culture is already complicated by the fact that our sense of bondedness is incredibly liquid and loose. We are a fanatically voluntaristic society, and most Americans demand that virtually experience in their daily life be voluntaristic to the core. Contemporary society cherishes breakable bonds.”   Our culture is increasingly a shame... Continue Reading

The student insisted that the school should have told parents and students about the change to bathroom policy so that they would be prepared. She explains that she signed on as a co-plaintiff to the lawsuit because the school continued refusing to respond to her concerns.   A Philadelphia high school student who was required... Continue Reading

“People celebrated Saturday as a day of change, but the magnitude of the vote only revealed that seismic change has already happened in Ireland. Yet, despite those seismic changes, there are some things which remain unchanged.”   So Ireland has voted overwhelmingly to change our Constitution by repealing the 8th Amendment. This leaves the way... Continue Reading

“Religious and human rights groups outside the country continued to provide numerous reports that members of underground churches were arrested, beaten, tortured, and killed because of their religious beliefs,” the report states. “According to the [Database Center for North Korean Human Rights], there was a report in 2016 of disappearances of persons who were found... Continue Reading

I first became aware of Fentanyl a few years ago as part of an “end of life” question in hospital. There I was told that Fentanyl is a powerful, even dangerous drug and everything I have seen since supports that view. Police officers and other first responders now must carry NARCAN in their vehicles to... Continue Reading

“Patients can experience moral conflict when they seek abortion and they believe that life begins at conception and that abortion is an act of murder,” reads a section in the chapter “Pregnancy Option Counseling Techniques” in “Early Abortion Training Workbook,” published by the university’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, according to The College Fix.   The University... Continue Reading

It starts in the womb, in places like India and China, where boys are valued more than girls for reasons of religion, family, and economics. This leads to girls being aborted at alarming rates. In other countries, we see the practice of female genital mutilation to assure sexual purity for marriage.   As a theologian... Continue Reading

According to religious liberty scholar Thomas Berg, law professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, the Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling opposes outright religious hostility but offers little indication on how future cases would pan out in different contexts. “This is a narrow, fact-based ruling, resting on two sorts of indicators that the Colorado state... Continue Reading

Borrowing from the work of Charles Taylor, James K.A. Smith speaks about expressive individualism when he writes, “Emerging from the Romantic expressionism of the late eighteenth century, it is an understanding ‘that each one of us has his/her own way of realizing our humanity,’ and that we are called to live that out (‘express’ it) rather than... Continue Reading