Since the first Europeans arrived here, captivity narratives have enthralled America's collective imagination. These real-life accounts of settlers seized by American Indians retaliating against invading peoples expressed both the dark underside and the eternal ...

"It's a girl!"

I received these words with tears of joy when our third child, Marilee, was born. We could have known her sex months earlier, of course, but we decided to wait. And yet, as I wrote in a recent Her.meneutics post, other cultures are far less willing ...

I met Kristin during my first shift in an urban E.R. in Portland 3 years ago. I was working in Fast Track as a physician assistant, and she was the assigned nurse for the day. She was strong and outspoken and said within minutes of meeting me, "I'm probably going ...

My father taught me how to ride a bike, the value of a great punchline, and what a woman was supposed to look and act like.

My dad was a great guy with a bad habit.

When we consider relationships negatively impacted by a pornography addiction, most of us first consider ...

Movies have taught me a few valuable lessons.

There may be a train platform in between numbers 9 and 10 in London's King's Cross Station. If two men are fighting for your attention, and one is very pale and the other is Native American, well, watch ...

Many parenting books promise fast results for raising children who always obey, toddlers who never talk back, and teens who keep the faith. The marketers of such books get that we consumers will buy almost anything if it promises speedy outcomes and comes in a ...

I slipped. My husband and I were asked to take on another church commitment. I was trying to decline graciously. In my e-mail response, I wrote, "We cannot help now, but hopefully in another season." I copied my husband on the e-mail and instantly ...

In the past few months, I couldn't help noticing the flurry of articles about the PCUSA's decision to ordain people in same-sex relationships, the repeal of the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, the passage of same-sex marriage laws in New York, and the ...

This week the Christian blogosphere worked itself into a frenzy over a Facebook status posted by Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. The status, which was later removed, read, "So, what story do you have about the most effeminate anatomically ...

Because I write often about reproductive ethics, I knew Bethany Patchin's story long before Mark Oppenheimer wrote about it in last weekend's New York Times. Bethany and Sam Torode divorced in 2009 after nine years of marriage, during which they had four children. ...

Two weeks ago, on an official trip to Africa, Michelle Obama gave a speech encouraging 76 young sub-Saharan African women participating in the Young African Women Leaders Forum in South Africa. They gathered at the Regina Mundi Church in the black township of ...

My husband and I have joked that our 2006 purchase of a townhome in a blue-collar suburb of Chicago must have been the single transaction that popped the housing price bubble in America. Within weeks after we signed the papers, the housing market began a historic ...

When I heard rumblings about Michele Bachmann's run for the presidency, I got nervous—though not the reasons you might think.

I'm not nervous about the political leanings of the Minnesota congresswoman and conservative Lutheran mother of five. In fact, I ...

Meghan O'Rourke is best known as a literary and cultural critic, a contributor to Slate, and the onetime fiction editor at The New Yorker. But she is a poet first, as is clear from the opening pages of her new memoir, The Long Goodbye. A chronicle of the final ...

Less than three weeks ago, I watched as my husband, Nathan, became the commanding officer of a U.S. Marine Corps infantry company. About 160 men, most of them barely adults, stood at attention in their camouflage and combat boots and waited as he became their ...