Mallory McDuff, Ph.D.

We expected a party.

My daughters and I had traded our jeans for skirts, covered our bare smiles with Burt's Bee lip gloss and loaded the car with enough PB&J sandwiches to feed every child at All Souls Episcopal Church.

Despite the torrential thunderstorms that evening, this promised...

Would Jesus have multiplied fish contaminated with mercury and given them to pregnant women among the multitudes?

I don't think so.

But for supporting decreased mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants -- and framing the matter in pro-life terms -- the Evangelical Environmental Network faces the...

With two children in public schools, I'm dismayed -- but not surprised -- to learn that the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank, planned to pay $100,000 to a consultant to develop a school curriculum that would promote skepticism about the science of global warming.

In a karmic twist,...

This week, my six-year old daughter Annie Sky labored over 20 pieces of pink construction paper, folding each piece in half, cutting the profile of a heart, and writing her double name in red marker to create cards for each child in her kindergarten class. "Everybody gets a Valentine," she...

Reading updates about the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, felt discouraging to me, with the United States seemingly out-of-touch with the reality of global warming. But I experienced a nagging sense of familiarity as US legislators at home and negotiators abroad ignored scientific truths, communicated through...

I didn't grow up as a holiday orphan.

Instead I was raised as a member of large extended families. I ate two Thanksgiving dinners every year: one at noon in Hattiesburg, Miss. with my father's family followed by an evening meal in Meridian, Miss., a 90-minute drive to my...

I didn't imagine seeing my hero this way.

This fall, I visualized harvesting kale with my daughters when I thought about seeing Wendell Berry -- farmer, writer, and modern-day prophet -- on his visit to Warren Wilson College where I teach and live. Instead, I was blasting Britney Spear's...

Monroe Moore and Lupe Perez, a couple from my church, requested and were denied a marriage license last week at the Buncombe County Register of Deeds in Asheville, N.C. With his cropped grey hair and gentle smile, Moore stood next to his partner of 21 years, Perez, who presented his...

We might want to pay attention when a movie with the title "Moneyball" opens the same week that protesters occupy Wall Street and Republicans leaders protest President Obama's call for the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes.

The game of baseball, as depicted in "Moneyball" is about...

Writer, farmer and modern-day prophet Wendell Berry will visit the college where I teach and live this fall, and I'm trying to remain cool and level-headed. For me, that's a challenge because I marvel at his poetic prose that challenges us to hold our spiritual values at the center of...

My 5-year-old started kindergarten the same week as the release of the movie "One Day," which the Christian Science Monitor described as a "rom-com weepie." While the reviewer didn't mean it as a compliment, I immediately bought my tickets online. I like leading-lady Ann Hathaway and was feeling weepy when...

With her self-deprecating honesty and trademark blond dreadlocks, writer Anne Lamott connected her story of Christian faith to the nearly 1,000 people gathered for the Pacific Northwest Spirituality Book Fair in Seattle, Wa. "We must recognize ourselves in each other and break the cycles of isolation that keep us oppressed...

As students return to school this fall, the high school drama "Glee" offers perspective on reconciling the united and divided fronts presented by religious traditions in recent headlines. The lesson for believers: Let our common values shape the stories that define us.

This summer, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill...

What do Saint Francis of Assisi and the New Orleans Saints have in common? Goggle the term "saints" to find out.

An online search for "saints" first reveals the official site of the football team that won this year's Super Bowl and then a site for religious saints recognized...