beauty
Wreckage and euphoria
Barbara Crooker’s new poetry collection is a journey through loss that reveals the world’s beauty.
Edwards for all of us
George Marsden’s new book returns to the old project of making Jonathan Edwards modern.
A prison cell transfigured
While teaching in a prison, I got to know a gardener.
Taking womanist theology to the beauty shop
“My mama was womanist. My grandma is womanist. Just because they don’t have the language or the identifier doesn’t make them less womanist.”
Annelisa Burns interviews Candice Benbow
What is a beautiful church building for?
What my bad sermons made bland, our sanctuary made sweet.
by Zen Hess
The words I turn to in times of grief and distress
“If it can’t be happy, make it beautiful.”
by Samuel Wells
When liturgy embraces difference
Rebecca Spurrier’s study of a “disabled church” and its lessons for all Christians
Christian Wiman’s stubborn, slippery faith
We need faith, Wiman suggests, because poetry isn't enough.
Take & read: New books in theology
Theology lives in the space between apocalypticism and Christian Platonism.
selected by Benjamin Myers
Sydney Lea's poetry of memory
After many years looking at life in all its idiosyncrasies, Lea offers his 12th collection. It's intimate and authentic.
Alienated from our own beauty
Sin distorts the reciprocity for which God made us.
Ravished by Beauty, by Belden C. Lane
In this splendid book Belden Lane has made a double contribution—to the
reordering of our perspectives on creation and to our understanding of
the Reformed tradition as a contributor to this reordering.
reviewed by E. Glenn Hinson
Old-fashioned love song
Song of Songs is a forgotten book, hidden away between pragmatic Ecclesiastes and monumental Isaiah, but if you look, you’ll find it, shining with summer’s golden light.
Out of the depths
The psalmists of the Bible often sound as if they’re drowning.