Brandon G. Withrow

May 17 is known as Ascension Thursday (the 40th day of Easter). It is the day many Christians observe Christ's ascension into heaven, though some will do it on the following Sunday. The day means many things to Christians, including the idea that Christ will also one day...

A new study at Northwestern University shows that left-handedness is the product of cooperation and competition in evolution (see ScienceDaily, "Shedding Light On Southpaws: Sports Data Help Confirm Theory Explaining Left-Handed Minority in General Population").

Being left-handed, I am among the minority of the population (10 percent),...

I'm on to you, Colbert.

The Colbert Report is your way of accomplishing your over-the-top bucket list, isn't it? You just have a bigger budget than the rest of us.

To justify my conspiracy theory, let me point out that just this last week he interviewed and sang with...

For centuries, portraits of Jesus have provided not only a good look into the history of art, but also the chemistry produced when theology meets culture. Depictions of Jesus' humanity pull from a cross-section of society, including every race, ethnicity, and culture, and a variety of ideological and theological positions.

In a recent study at The Ohio State University, facts alone were not enough for one to accept the theory of evolution (read press release). Researchers studying pre-service biology teachers at two South Korean universities, all with an adequate understanding of the science behind evolution, discovered that facts...

In a new survey of American Protestant pastors by Lifeway, 73 percent of ministers disagree with the statement "I believe God used evolution to create people." Of that large number, 64 percent strongly disagreed. As you might expect, the numbers were close to the same for the question,...

"Coming out" now may be a clichéd term, but as the "We Are Atheism" project has shown, it hasn't entirely lost its currency. The new organization encourages others to be open about their atheism, an act that is more than a confession; it holds the real risk of...

Christopher Hitchens, a lion of atheism, passed away at 62 on Thursday after a struggle with esophageal cancer. It is hard to miss the story. Depending on who you are, you might see Hitchens as brilliant, bully, or both. For many Christians, Hitchens was a messenger of the devil and...

It doesn't take long before one discovers the religious boundary lines of students. They are not always aware of them. It takes a little prodding and poking with questions to get at those sacred, forbidden or sheltered subjects.

Like losing one's keys in the mud and fingering around uncertainly,...

If your house is on fire, do you ask the firefighter if he or she is an atheist before you accept his or her help? I doubt it.

Similarly, I'm wondering about the real reasons The American Cancer Society will not work with the atheist charity organization,...

Last August, Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry remarked that evolution is a theory with "gaps" in it, immediately generating up millions of Google search results.His perspective is not his alone; polls continue to show that while evangelicals are not entirely closed-off to the idea, evolution is...

I admit it. I want Westboro Baptist Church to protest my funeral. I have no plans to die anytime soon and I'm not inviting anyone to make my dream a reality just yet. When that day does arrive, however, I want Westboro near the closest news camera.

There are...

Like so many issues of justice in the Catholic church, the ordination of women to the priesthood is one that is not ready to disappear anytime soon. And as Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois, a priest for almost four decades and an activist in the cause of ordaining women, recently discovered,...

In philosophy, at least one discussion is as old as the discipline itself: What is the nature of personal identity? Or, to personalize it, what does it mean for me to be me over time?

Say, for example, it's my 90th birthday; I sit around with family...

Last week I piled my books and student papers in my bag and headed out to The Flying Joe, a local coffee shop where the excellent mocha takes some of the pain out of grading undergraduate and seminary papers. While my visits there are inconsistent, I do notice...

Support is growing for the idea of bipartisan seating at the upcoming State of the Union address on January 25. The idea proposed by Third Way, a moderate Democratic think-tank, could end the 200-year-old tradition of showcasing our political divide by cheers or jeers from either side of...

My teenaged years were spent in my father's small Reformed Baptist church in Ohio. We never had thoughts of becoming a mega-church, but we never turned away a new family or two. A sight I remember seeing repeatedly, however, was the tendency for us to suddenly have a caravan of...

Last night I made my usual trek from Findlay, Ohio, where I teach seminarians and undergrad religious studies majors, to Perrysburg, about 35 minutes north. I moved with my wife to Perrysburg just under a year ago, a picturesque Midwestern town with parades for just about every occasion,...