Special Offers

Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Mark D. Roberts

An Interview with Keith Getty

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:26 pm By Alissa Wilkinson

Do you know the modern hymn In Christ Alone? There’s an interview in The Curator with Keith Getty, one-half of the songwriting duo who wrote the song: NZ: Would it be fair to say that there’s a tension you’ve experienced between writing music as an art form—as a liturgical art form—and creating it as a commodity for the marketplace? KG: There’s always tension for anyone. There are broad level tensions. Music and business have always been uncomfortable companions. Business and religion have been uncomfortable companions. And... Read more

Maintaining Your Faith While Playing ‘Words With Friends’

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:26 pm By Alissa Wilkinson

There’s a fun (and sort of tongue-in-cheek) post at The High Calling about “maintaining your faith” while playing Words With Friends, the popular Scrabble-style iPhone game: 1. Thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s words. Just like in Scrabble, each time you play a turn, you get a collection of letters you can use to spell a word. Don’t covet your neighbor’s letters if they get the much-desired “blank letter” which can be used as any letter. Don’t out act in... Read more

The Great Diagram

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:26 pm By Alissa Wilkinson

Just for fun: a poster of sentence diagrams of the first sentences of famous novels made the rounds on the Internet last week, and the Paris Review decided to take a look at the history of sentence diagrams: As a pedagogical device, sentence diagrams have fallen out of fashion; I never had to draw them (if that’s even the right verb) in school, nor was I made to study any grammar beyond the rudimentary parts of speech. This makes me feel like... Read more

An Unlikely Mentor

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:27 pm By Alissa Wilkinson

At The High Calling, Christine Scheller remembers an unlikely mentor: Ours was an unlikely pairing on the surface. Me: an evangelical Christian, one-time homeschooler, pro-lifer. He a secular Jew, pioneering New York City public television host and station co-founder, long-time president of the Motion Picture Association’s ratings board. What we had in common was Rutgers University, where he taught for 50 years and where I studied as an adult student in the 1990s. I initially didn’t think much of his... Read more

In a Sod House

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:27 pm By Alissa Wilkinson

Amy Lepine Peterson writes at Art House America about On the Banks of Plum Creek – and depression, and acedia, and poetry: When I wash the dishes or grade the multiple choice quizzes, then, I try to cultivate my understanding of how those tasks fit into(yes!) the redemptive arc of history. Maybe I’m joining in God’s creative nature by creating babies and veggie stir-fry and quilts, by telling stories and painting with watercolors and making up silly songs and dances. Maybe... Read more

Auden, Anxiety, and the Music on the Way

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:27 pm By Alissa Wilkinson

Anxiety is a powerful problem for many people – I was recently amazed to find out that nearly half of one of my college classes freely admitted to having been on anxiety medication at some point in their lives. For many, it’s something they just have to live with. So I thought Laura Ortberg Turner’s essay on the poetry of Auden and a symphony by Bernstein – and anxiety – was great: The first time I heard the song, I... Read more

Rituals for Creativity

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:27 pm By Alissa Wilkinson

It’s Monday, which means we’re all creaking back into gear. On Mondays I always try to kick off my week well by settling into a routine. Sometimes I’m more successful than others, but I know that we’re created as beings who thrive on rituals (after all, observing the Sabbath is one of the first, and most important, rituals). Rituals help us do our best work, and help us flourish as people, too. Over at the Accidental Creative blog, Todd Henry... Read more

A Film Festival and a Church, Together

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:27 pm By Alissa Wilkinson

There’s a lot of discussion in both the religious world and the film world about the often fractious relationship between the two. But last weekend, the New York Times reported on the well-respected True/False Film Festival . . . and the 4000-member Evangelical Presbyterian church that supports it, while letting it run mostly autonomously: It was Mr. Cover who approached the festival with the notion of sponsorship; it wasn’t an outreach attempt by the secular programmers, which he openly says “don’t agree... Read more

Feminism, Depravity, and House of Cards

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:27 pm By Alissa Wilkinson

Whether or not you’re one of the many Americans who’s been spending an outsize amount of time watching season two of House of Cards on Netflix, you’ve certainly heard about the phenomenon and its calculating power-hungry couple, Frank and Claire Underwood, played by Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. Wright won a Golden Globe for her performance, and many have discussed whether Claire is a feminist heroine or nightmare. Conor Friedersdorf has an illuminating, thoughtful take at The Atlantic on just that question (WARNING... Read more

The Powerlessness of Positive Thinking

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 3:27 pm By Alissa Wilkinson

By now, the idea of the “power of positive thinking” is a cliche, but one that we almost accept as being self-evidently true. Positive people get ahead, right? At the New Yorker, Adam Alter explores research challenging that notion: According to a great deal of research, positive fantasies may lessen your chances of succeeding. In one experiment, the social psychologists Gabriele Oettingen and Doris Mayer asked eighty-three German students to rate the extent to which they “experienced positive thoughts, images, or fantasies on... Read more

24
25
26
27
28

Browse Our Archives

TRENDING AT PATHEOS Evangelical

view all Evangelical blogs