Don't miss the January/February issue of Touchstone magazine, which features a special section, "Return to the Father's House: God the Father and Human Fatherhood." As the title and subtitle suggest, this issue addresses two pressing questions—the widespread effort in some quarters of the church to downplay or even eliminate the biblical conception of God as Father, and the crisis of (human) fatherhood in the United States—and argues that the two are in fact closely linked.

Touchstone, if you haven't seen it, defines itself as "a Christian journal, conservative in doctrine and eclectic in content, with editors and readers from each of the three great divisions of Christendom—Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox. The mission of the magazine, and of its publisher, the Fellowship of St. James, is to provide a place where Christians of various backgrounds can speak with one another on the basis of shared belief in the fundamental doctrines of the faith as revealed in Holy Scripture and summarized in the ancient creeds of the church." (Readers who have seen Touchstone already may notice that the January/February issue is uncommonly handsome and sprightly, thanks to a much-needed redesign.)

There is far more to chew on in the January/February issue than can be readily summarized here, ranging from sociologist David Blankenhorn's powerful essay on "the spiritual dimensions of fatherhood and the spiritual sources of contemporary father absence" to Father Patrick Reardon's characteristically provocative and immensely learned theological reflections on what Christians do and do not mean "when we call God by the name Father." I urge you to read it for yourself—or better yet, in a Sunday school class or a reading ...