Whenever I teach an introductory course in literature, I try to reserve the last two weeks for a text my students will almost certainly be unfamiliar with. I choose a work that they will find difficult, one that will anger them and often one that will offend them. This term…  [more]

In certain circles of conservative Protestantism, history can sometimes seem to fall off a cliff after Acts 28. For some of us, National Geographic’s latest cover story on the Apostles and their relics may seem like a letter from a different world - and that’s probably too bad. Up until…  [more]

On the surface, the question was insulting. And hurtful. I'd just taken part in a diversity panel during a Sunday service at a contemporary church in a large Midwestern city. Church leaders had approached me to participate because I was one of the only African Americans in the congregation. A…  [more]

Today, on his 200th birthday, Charles Dickens is a writer for our times. Dickens is the rare artist appreciated both in his own day and by succeeding generations. Art that can be explained away by its component parts is not likely to be great art; the greatness of Dickens’ art,…  [more]

One of the first Holocaust novels I read was Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars, which tells the story of 10-year-old Annemarie Johansen and her family as they rescue Jews from Nazi forces in Copenhagen, Denmark. I was too young to grasp World War II’s immensity - the international impact, the…  [more]