I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies…. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. – Amos 5:21-24 + Sign up to receive…

One reason why we Christians argue so much about which hymn to sing, which liturgy to follow, which way to worship is that the commandments teach us to believe that bad liturgy eventually leads to bad ethics. You begin by singing some sappy, sentimental hymn, then you pray some pointless prayer, and the next thing…

Too often the price exacted by society for security and respectability is that the Christian movement in its formal expression must be on the side of the strong against the weak. This is a matter of tremendous significance, for it reveals to what extent a religion that was born of a people acquainted with persecution…

The other night a retired general appeared on CNN describing how to “win” in Iraq. Quoting analyst Andrew Krepinevich, he called for the “oil stain strategy”: Don’t spread our troops out thinly over a large region, but rather concentrate and dominate strongly in one or two places (Baghdad being one of them), thus letting security…

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