John D. Caputo. Hoping Against Hope: Confessions of a Postmodern Pilgrim. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2015, 214pp. $14.99 paperback. My thesis advisor has a consistent thread (among many) of advice for working through writing-up one’s research: give your reader a foothold.…
Tuesday, November 4, 2008 was a monumental day. It was the day America elected Barack Obama as the first African-American President of the United States. In response to the election of our first black President, a few prominent voices in…
A few years ago, when I taught an undergraduate ‘systematic theology for artists’ class, we looked at the traditional ways certain biblical scenes are portrayed in Western visual art. There is a grammar to them—standard symbols, colours and placement—that allow…
Biblical background: In recent decades, performance art has considered how intangible experiences, such as fasting and other acts of endurance, may be viewed as artworks. This is seen, for example, in Joseph Beuys’ I like America and America likes me,…
Editor’s Note: This is the second installment of a four-part series by Jim McCullough that will look at the ways in which art contributes to faith As a field, theological aesthetics received renewed attention in the late 1960’s into…
Christopher Calderhead. Illuminating the Word: The Making of The Saint John’s Bible, Second Edition. Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2005, 240pp. $49.95 hardcover. Although Christian belief holds that Jesus is the incarnate Word, Christians often neglect the way in which the…
Proposition: all of life is doxological response and everything to which we put our hands reflects our beliefs. And Apple products are no different. At any given moment, whatever we deem to be the most praiseworthy ‘thing,’ we tend to…
Aaron Rosen. Art and Religion in the 21st Century. London: Thames and Hudson, 2015, 256 pp., £32.00 hardcover. In his latest publication, Aaron Rosen, Professor of Religious Studies & Director of International and Cultural Projects at Rocky Mountain College, approaches…
I’m not sure there has ever been a time when humans loved silence. This is not to deny that we have a knack for evading certain words and certain speakers. It is simply to say that, east of Eden, we’ve…