Featured

Illustration of a surgeon wearing glasses, a surgical cap, and mask with surgical tools and bright lights in the background.
Bring Back Hippocrates
The Hippocratic Oath has largely disappeared from modern medicine. What have we lost?
Lydia S. Dugdale
Essay
An artistic, colorful depiction of a Torah scroll with Hebrew script and ornamental decoration.
The Dance of Devotion
Lifestyle discipline in achievers is admired. Religious discipline in believers, not so much.
Kelsey Osgood
Essay
Bearded man with intense expression holding two candle holders with yellow candles.
Victor Hugo’s Masterpiece of Impossibility
In Les Misérables, competing vows reveal the paradox of grace.
Caitrin Keiper
Essay
A woman in white robes knights a kneeling man in chainmail with a sword on his shoulder.
A Vow Will Keep You
For a Bruderhof pastor, a lifelong vow makes mutual faithfulness possible.
Randall Gauger
Viewpoint
Colorful abstract painting of two stylized birds facing each other with patterned wings and feathers.
A Broken but Faithful Marriage
My grandparents separated for decades. But they never broke faith with their bond.
Dori Moody
Personal History
Painting of a gray building entrance with an American flag and a black lantern on the wall.
Can Love Take Sides?
The law of love excludes no one, but requires a choice from everyone.
Wendell Berry
Essay

Insights

Mountain landscape with rocky outcrops and green foothills under a clear blue sky.
A Defense of Vows
Making vows is not for cowards.
GK Chesterton
Reading
Abstract painting of a colorful rock formation with blue and purple sky background.
The One Who Promises
The making and keeping of promises and vows seems to be something close to Taylor Swift’s heart. What can we learn from her songs?
King Ho Leung
Essay
Abandoned brick buildings with broken roofs and scattered debris reflected in puddles on cracked concrete.
Why I Chose Poverty
Those who, like Francis of Assisi, reject wealth and possessions find the whole world is theirs.
Andreas Knapp
Essay
Two white herons standing in a lily pond and one heron flying above the water.
Demystifying Chastity
It’s time to rediscover chastity as a virtue for everyone.
Carino Hodder
Essay
Morning sunrise over a misty field with tall grass, trees, a barbed wire fence, and a spider web.
The Adventure of Obedience
It’s not popular. But obedience can transplant us to places we never expected.
Norann Voll
Essay
Ancient mosaic of a ship with a sail and an animal figurehead holding a whip at the bow.
Vows of Baptism
In Christianity, baptism means a total transformation, as these classic church readings from Armenia, North Africa, and England show.
Reading
Ancient mosaic depicting two birds facing each other with a stylized tree between them.
Hutterite Ten Points of Baptism
This teaching from sixteenth-century Moravia instructed Anabaptist believers seeking rebaptism as adults – a step that could mean a martyr’s death.
Reading
Group of children and adults in medieval costumes walking on a path with handmade shields in a green grassy area.
Tiny Knights
Some life lessons are best taught by King Arthur, Robin Hood, and the occasional cowboy.
Maureen Swinger
Community Snapshot

Web Exclusives

Group of men standing with flags including Confederate and Gadsden flags on a city street.
The Day No One Would Say the Nazis Were Bad
Some say relativism is on its way out on college campuses, giving way to partisan passions. This ethics professor finds it alive and well.
Mary Townsend
Painting of a person in blue resting their face on one hand and raising the other hand against a red background.
No Promises
Does Alcoholics Anonymous work?
Eve Tushnet
Man and woman in vintage attire sitting in an old-fashioned open vehicle on a street.
John Wayne, The Quiet Man
When John Wayne goes to Ireland in John Ford’s The Quiet Man (1952), there’s no escaping the marriage rituals, for better or worse.
Hannah Long
Man in a thick sweater resting his arms and head on a bench in an empty sunlit room with wooden benches.
Rich Mullins: Ragamuffin, Celebrity, Disciple
The singer-songwriter defined a generation of Christian music but sought a Christ-like response to wealth and fame.

Arts & Letters

Painting of a cityscape focusing on rooftops and domes with blue and purple hues.
Poem: “Blessing the Bells”
Bless the sounding bells— / The foundry and the furnace, / the partials and the pitch.
Ned Balbo
Poetry
Dried brown leaf with circular coral-colored embroidery patches on and around it on a white background.
Poem: “Autumn in Chrysalis-Time”
It’s butterfly-dying time / Leaf-grieving and thieving time / Blue wings-against-pavement time / Less praise than appraisal time…
Ned Balbo
Poetry
Book cover with carrots, turnip, and beet roots growing in soil, titled What Your Food Ate.
Editors’ Picks: What Your Food Ate
A review of David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé’s What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health
Ragan Sutterfield
Editors’ Pick
Book cover titled Untrustworthy by Bonnie Kristian with icons and subtitle about knowledge crisis and politics.
Editors’ Picks: Untrustworthy
A review of Bonnie Kristian’s “Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community”
L. M. Sacasas
Editors’ Pick
Book cover of The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid with a silhouette on a blue eye shape on purple background.
Editors’ Picks: The Last White Man
A review of Mohsin Hamid’s The Last White Man: A Novel
Anthony M. Barr
Editors’ Pick
Illustrated portrait of a middle-aged man with short hair looking upward on a blue and brown background.
The Raceless Gospel
Half a century after his death, Clarence Jordan still has much to teach America about war, wealth, race, and religion.
Starlette Thomas
Essay
Two small brown rodents inside a white photo frame surrounded by pink and peach roses on a pink surface.
Vows in Brief
How three monogamous animal couples got from courtship to “I do.”
Phil Christman
Humor