Reviews

This book is a healthy reminder to take responsibility and shape relationships intentionally, with respect for both similarities and differences across genders and between them.

When the children venture outdoors, they encounter a homeless man, and ask, “Why would he sleep outside?” One question leads to another: “what is it like to live on the streets?” “Why do people have to sleep on the street?” and “Are there children who are homeless?”

I used to hope that I would outgrow these films someday; with age and self-knowledge, I have stopped expecting this. We need genres, I suppose, for every facet of life, all the bits of ourselves, including the inner kid.

I teach a course on Harry Potter and Christian Spirituality at the University of Alberta, so this issue is close to my heart. I often interact with students who were banned from the books and movies as teenagers, but now want to know how to relate all things to their faith.

Writing can cultivate hope; it can be used by God to chisel the author; it can be part of a spiritual journey; it can share our faith.

“People of faith might want to ask a new question: What are we called to do?”

Jamie Quatro on how to write about sex and spirituality.

Sara Pulliam Bailey, Karen Swallow Prior, C. Christopher Smith and James K.A. Smith discuss ways to converse with civility.

Rev. Fleming Rutledge urges pastors to “train their mind for the ear” and to read sermons with urgency, passion, and consistent eye contact, alert to keeping God the subject of their verbs, and otherwise using the passive voice to put ourselves in the background.

John Wilson and Macy Halford discuss the fault lines around Evangelical identity.

Let’s start with the obvious: Superhero movies cannot be redeemed. At least, like all human works, they will be saved through fire, an image that has always suggested to me an extreme attenuation and transformation of the saved thing. When God reckons with us—with human history, with human culture, with a rapidly warming world in which $200 million spandex smack-fests may well prove to be among the last major collective human cultural projects, a late entry in the timeline that begins with cave art and Gobekli Tepe—most of this genre will go in the twinkling of an eye.

Let me describe an author. This writer is impatient with theological abstraction, radically committed to justice and holds a healthy suspicion of the rich. Our author is rooted in a deep Christian piety, profoundly committed to prayer, embraces a subversive joy in the midst of tragedy, and is circumspect and wise regarding language. Indeed, we could sum up our description by saying that this person is intimately related to Jesus.