A country up for grabs
Myanmar’s military toppled the civilian government. Now the country’s diverse population is banding together in protest
What goes into the mouth
The material symbol of God’s blessings at Thanksgiving time is a table laden with food, but many of us have trouble accepting grace. As legitimate concerns about obesity rise, so does the danger of turning healthy eating into an idol
Dying of old age
Obamacare is crushing the people it needs most—young adults
Game ender
A Hollywood franchise in the making falls flat over its author's commitment to traditional marriage
Men on the street
Many praise street evangelism, others dislike it. Our reporter watched and spoke with many street evangelists, compared those who discuss with those who rant, and discovered more variety than meets the eye
Voices
Andrée Seu Peterson
Churning like cider
While I am upstairs in bed, a strange business goes on in my refrigerator, entirely out of my hands. It’s like the farmer who plants and then “sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts ...
Marvin Olasky
Navigating the rapids
Unsurprisingly, my Oct. 19 stories and sidebars about the death penalty drew lots of reader response, favorable and unfavorable: See this week’s Mailbag for examples of both. For those who mi...
Mindy Belz
Waiting on the platform
The trains are running again in Cairo, and Sara Labib is optimistic: “Now I can travel from Cairo to Alexandria to see my family.” Egypt has been at a standstill, she said, “especially with curfew...
Joel Belz
Pesky reminders
I’m not sure just which president it was—most folks point to Ronald Reagan—who earned the term “Teflon President.” Whoever it was, he’s been royally upstaged over the last few years by Barack Obam...
The Editors
Mailbag
‘Dead seriousness’ Oct. 19 It costs more state and federal tax money to execute a prisoner than to house, feed, and clothe him for the rest of his natural life. For your reasons and t...
Janie B. Cheaney
A perfect political storm
While I was growing up I read and reread an old collection of Grimm’s Fairy Tales that was unaccountably sitting on the shelf (kids never wonder where those books come from, or who bought them, bu...
Notebook
Technology
New eye on crime
The traditional police uniform is loaded down with all the gear a law enforcer could need at a moment’s notice: handcuffs, memo book, flashlight, mace, walkie-talkie, an expandable baton. Y...
Science
Carbon goes green
Let’s check off the things we’ve heard about carbon dioxide: Humans exhale it; oil and coal emit it. It’s a combination of a carbon atom and two oxygen atoms. It’s a greenhouse gas. It’s accumulat...
Religion
A better environment
A new report by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) suggests that declining percentages of homeschool families are motivated primarily by religious conviction. The NCES, a statisti...
Lifestyle
School of hard knocks
In Lifestyle two issues ago we profiled Dean Hatch, 84, who is approaching his seventh decade in the workforce. He said people can be happy at work by following a simple formula: “They should find...
Houses of God
The United Reformed Church
The United Reformed Church in Guildford, England. ...
Sports
Opening the gates
Should women be allowed to watch sporting events? That’s the question Iranian officials will de discussing after FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association) President Sepp Blatter, du...
Money
Bursting bubbles
The housing market is looking better. In some places it is downright hot. In November, CoreLogic, a firm specializing in real estate analysis, said home prices had reached an annual growth ...
Culture
Movies & TV
Family and forgiveness
If you’ve ever been to a black Baptist church, you know you’re in for a cascade of full-body, full-spirit praise and dance. Now imagine that performed as a Christmas musical drama—a mishmash of cl...
Notable CDs
Notable CDs
One way you can intelligently approach this two-disc recording is to read the pianist Thomas Sauer’s erudite liner notes, which emphasize the 19 years of artistic development these compositions re...
Notable Books
Notable Books
In this modern version of The Scarlet Letter, Rachel Stoltzfus lives within a community of Old Order Mennonites. She has had a child out of wedlock, and the scorn she experiences begins to dissolv...
Movies & TV
Thor: The Dark World
Thor: The Dark World, colloquially known as Thor 2, is another Marvel Comics movie in the prolific family of The Avengers, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, and Iron Man, but audiences aren’t ...
Movies & TV
The Book Thief
In this visually bombastic age where smartphones and selfies are our culture’s ubiquitous ornaments, a film like The Book Thief comes as a much-needed reminder of the value of stories, of books, o...
Movies & TV
Box Office Top 10
Cautions: Quantity of sexual (S), violent (V), and foul-language (L) content on a 0-10 scale, with 10 high, from kids-in-mind.com S ...
Q&A
Town crier
Mark Leibovich, a New York Times Washington reporter and author of the hot-selling This Town (Blue Rider Press, 2013), is the most honest mainstream journalist I’ve met concerning reporting in Was...
Music
No average guy
The massively influential rock poet and guitarist Lou Reed died on Sunday morning, Oct. 27, at age 71. Appreciators of coincidence will note that “Sunday Morning” is also the title of the first so...
Books
An oldie but goodie
Matthew Henry’s six-volume Commentary on the Whole Bible has long been an evangelical favorite for its combination of thoroughness, specific detail, and price: It’s never been hugely expensive, an...
Dispatches
News
'State of calamity'
Inside the Redemptorist Catholic Church in Tacloban, thousands of local residents packed into the church’s low, wooden benches, waiting for rice and water after Typhoon Haiyan barreled across the ...
News
Dispatches
Sox win again One year after a 93-loss season, the newly managed Red Sox roared back to win the team’s third World Series title in 10 years. The Sox beat the St. Louis Cardinals in six game...
Human Race
Human Race
Resigned Doug Phillips resigned as president of Vision Forum Ministries on Oct. 30 after admitting to engaging in an extramarital relationship with a woman. Phillips announced he is canceli...
Looking Ahead
Looking Ahead
Nov. 25 Russian President Vladimir Putin will travel to visit Pope Francis today in Vatican City. The audience marks the first meeting between Putin and the current leader of the Roma...
Quick Takes
Quick Takes
Grandma style Last year, eighth-grader Maya Van Wagenen wasn’t very popular. To fix the problem, the Statesboro, Ga., teen thumbed through the pages of a dusty copy of the 1958 book Betty C...
Quotables
Quotables
'We’re lending money we don’t have, to kids who will never be able to pay it back, for jobs that no longer exist.’ Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs fame on what he believes is American soc...