Fatherhood

Father’s Day is celebrated throughout the world on different days, with different histories and traditions. But the American holiday, the third Sunday of June, has its origins in the church. In 1908, Grace Golden Clayton organized the first Father’s Day celebration in a Methodist church in Fairmont, West Virginia, to memorialize men killed in a local mining disaster. Today it serves as a time to reflect on the role dads play in their children’s lives and, in many churches, the Fatherhood of God.

Review

The Lovely Country That Smells of Evil

Katherine James

A memoir of apartheid-era South Africa juggles affection, anger, and hope for redemption.

Faithful Fathers

Reports of the death of fatherhood have been greatly exaggerated. There are many good dads, like mine, quietly blessing their children.

Paternity Leave Made Me a Better Christian Dad

Time off at the very beginning helps fathers prepare to bring up their children in the “discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

You Abused and Oppressed Me, Dad. I Forgive You.

Carrie Sheffield

How a community’s example of radical forgiveness helped me relinquish my own rage.

Review

Kids Aren’t Cheap. That Doesn’t Fully Explain Why We’re Ambivalent About Having Them.

Bonnie Kristian

A new book explores why what was once a default life stage now feels like an increasingly fraught choice.

Being Human

Empathy and Remembering with Esau McCaulley

Author and theologian Esau McCaulley on absence and presence.

Joseph Was Jesus’ ‘Real Dad’

I don’t need a biological bond to be the father of the embryos my wife and I adopted.

Testimony

I Hadn’t Committed Suicide. But I Was Spiritually Dead.

The prison ID’ed the wrong man. But the mistake was powerfully revealing.

How Then Should Men Live?

Our culture won’t say what a man should be. The church can.

The Russell Moore Show

Esau McCaulley Makes Grace Plausible

The author and public theologian talks about the power of context.