The United States is about to start importing beef from Ireland once more, with broader imports from the EU sure to follow soon. Though big ag will kick up a fuss, this is an obvious good move.

Before there can be peace between Israelis and Palestinians, there must be peace between Palestinians.

It’s hard boozing, not NATO, and it is at the root of much of the decay in post-Soviet Russia.

How much of the Christmas story is “real” and how much of both this story—and ultimately the entire record of the the Scriptures—is historically accurate? This is a much more complicated question than it may appear at first glance.

As the Christmas season draws to a close and the return of regular blogging looms, I’m looking back over this short period of intense religion writing and thinking about how writing on religion is and is not like writing on other controversial topics.

Boko Haram’s new excursions into Cameroon exploit West Africa’s inability to cooperate across international boundaries in response to the Islamist threat.

To get any insight at all into what Jesus’ childhood and upbringing were like, you have to do something that sometimes makes Protestants uncomfortable: study Mary.

If you have secularist projects in a country with strongly religious demographics, beware of democracy! Has the religiously tone-deaf Obama administration finally gotten this?

The flawed human race, trapped in a cycle of cascading pain and wrong is what, and who, God is bound and determined to love; the question is how can he do it?

The Christmas story suggests that we can somehow try to both be loyal members of our nations, our families, our tribes—and also to reach out to the broader human community of which we are also a part.