Kristin Schwain. Signs of Grace: Religion and American Art in the Gilded Age. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008, xi + 172 pp., £22.75 cloth. In this exploration of late nineteenth-century religious art in America, Kristin Schwain, Associate Professor of…
I’m coming to you from St Benedict’s Abbey in Atchison, Kansas, and I’d like to speak a word on behalf of utilitarian art. As I walk around the grounds of the Abbey, which is also home to Benedictine College, I…
In my last post, I suggested that Jonathan Borofsky’s counting and keeping of a dream record might be seen in terms of ancient Jewish scribal practice, and that doing so provides a context for reading his later work with religious…
David Hooker is a ceramicist and sculptor living in the Chicago area where he is associate professor of art at Wheaton College. He grew up on South Carolina, and he received an MFA in Ceramics from Kent State. He blogs…
The arts are transformative. For many people involved in exploring the intersection of theology and the arts, this is a fundamental axiom. It’s also a commonly held belief by the wider public. However, while there may be many good reasons…
Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. (Isaiah 54:2) Church buildings can be places of comfort and hope; and as…
Since last autumn’s Theatrical Theology conference at St Andrews, I’ve been mulling over Shannon Crago-Snell’s sophisticated and helpful reading of theatre as a metaphor for Christian life, specifically her refusal to assign particular roles to particular beings or groups –…
I’m not sure when the shift to using PowerPoint in the church happened. At some point, screens replaced paper, words replaced notes, and the orientation of the congregation was all in one direction – towards the projection. While some suggest…
This post is long overdue, but I wanted to write it anyway. In a 2009 TED Talk titled “Your Elusive Creative Genius,” Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame spoke about the need for a way of thinking about artistic creativity that…