Christians can be adept at drawing lines, determining what it means to be "a good Christian" and judging those who stray out of bounds. Other times they erase all the lines in favor of a vague and inoffensive...

Many a Westerner has had a cross-cultural experience of honor and shame. First there are those stuttering moments in the new social landscape. Then after missed cues and social bruises comes the revelation...

For the first-century Roman world the cross was first and foremost an instrument of shameful and violent execution. But early Christians, who had seen their world upended by the atoning power of the cross...