I just found out that my autumn Christian Century story on “The Mormon Moment” was the magazine’s second-most popular article of 2011. But this isn’t because the article was particularly well-written or insightful; it wasn’t. I tried to do too much in too little space, a common problem with the disappearance of long-form journalism. No,…

A friend of mine recently pointed out that tomorrow is the Feast of the Holy Innocents. Don’t know what that is? Neither did I. In a nutshell, it marks that icky, violent part of the nativity story that every Christmas pageant blithely ignores: Herod perceiving that he was deluded by the wise men, was exceeding…

I love this post from Ellen Painter Dollar over at the Introverted Church blog. She hits upon something fundamental about the irony of December: the Advent season encourages us to slow down and embrace silent reflection even as the wider culture eggs us to speed up and get ready for Christmas. This is particularly true…

In Week 3 of Advent, our Wednesday devotion from Bonhoeffer brings ever closer the question of redemption: what does it mean for us? Clearly, we’re looking for “something different from the anxious, petty, depressed, feeble Christian spirit that we see again and again” each December . . . but what does that look like? –JKR…

Jana Riess
about

Jana Riess

Jana Riess is the author of Flunking Sainthood, a 2011 book about failing at twelve different spiritual practices. She is also currently working on The Twible, a three-year Twitter project with humorous daily Bible updates for your amusement (find her on Twitter as @janariess). She has a few silly degrees from swanky schools but was never once able to climb the rope in gym class. Her spiritual director is Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

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