After reading a Time magazine essay in which a youth minister described the television show Glee as "anti-Christian," I tuned in and watched. I was absolutely dumbfounded by what I saw, but not because it was any more "anti-Christian" than anything else on television. Indeed, I was far from offended and found Glee to be great fun. What took me by surprise was seeing that Glee is set in a place called William McKinley High School. My mind reeled as…

Question 46: What do you mean by saying, "He ascended to heaven"? Answer: That Christ was taken up from the earth into heaven before the very eyes of his disciples and remains there on our behalf until he comes again to judge the living and the dead. Question 47: But isn't Christ with us until the end of the world as he promised? Answer: Christ is truly human and truly God. In his human nature Christ is not now on…

Over long centuries Western Christians have saved some of their most vile polemics for the Prophet Muhammad. In the Middle Ages Dante threw him into the pit of hell, and within the last decade the head of the American Southern Baptist Convention called him a terrorist and a pedophile. But what have Muslims thought of Muhammad? In Memories of Muhammad Omid Safi introduces us to the Muhammad of faith. More than a biography, this book is a useful introduction to…

There's no dearth of publishing in Christian theology. To the contrary, an expanding universe of theological publishers seems to churn out more and more books, now supplemented by the ofthailed (and over-hailed, I'd say) blogosphere. So at this moment there are countless theologians writing--sketching outlines and plans, whiling away at manuscripts, passionate about their ideas, all with the aim of reaching an audience via the still-exhilirating technology bequeathed to us by Gutenberg. But for all that publishing, there surely is…

I've recently begun living alone in an off-the-grid cabin in Colorado's San Isabel National Forest. No electricity or running water. No f lush toilet. No easy-access concrete driveway or garage. No cell coverage and no landline. I'm the caretaker of the cabin and the land it sits on--twelve mountain acres of lodgepole pines and a pond. Bears live here, too, but there's still snow on the ground, so I don't worry about them just yet. I fret obsessively about other…

In June, Wesley Granberg-Michaelson will step down as the general secretary of the Reformed Church in America after 17 years of service. In February, Granberg-Michaelson had this conversation with Trygve Johnson, Dean of the Chapel at Hope College. We join them mid-conversation, when the topic is Richard Wolffe's book Revival: The Struggle for Survival Inside the Obama White House. WGM: I'm about halfway through Revival by Richard Wolffe, which is a story of the first eighteen months of the Obama…