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.

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 doesn’t tell us how to reconcile the virtues and the vices of universal cosmopolitanism and local loyalty. But it suggests that we can somehow try to be true to both ideals: to be loyal members of our nations, our families, our tribes—and at the same time to reach out to the broader human community of which we are also a part.

A buzzword in the foreign policy world right now is fatigue. But according to the well-respected Chicago Council on Global Affairs Survey, 69 percent of Americans support the US taking an active role in world affairs.

That little baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying so demurely in the manger is the biggest troublemaker in world history, and the shocking claims that Christianity makes about who He is and what He means irritate and antagonize people all over the world.

Is there a definitively Christian response to impeachment? I cannot draw a straight answer to that question from the Bible.

For believers, the question isn’t why there are presents under the tree. It is whether the love around the family circle speaks of a larger reality and in some way reflects the meaning inherent in the universe as a whole, or whether that happy Christmas morning feeling is nothing more than the biologically conditioned response of a collection of primates in a kinship setting.

Happy fifth day of Christmas, and welcome back to the 2019–20 Yule Blog, where we aim to keep the holiday…

Church calendars mark December 28 as Holy Innocents’ Day, the day we remember the deaths of the babies in Bethlehem who were murdered at Herod’s command.