Theology Through the Looking Glass

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, Alice has been having quite a run through the Garden of Live Flowers. “I declare it’s marked out just like a large chessboard!” she says. “There ought to be some men moving about somewhere—and so there are!” Alice gets excited by all . . . . Continue Reading »

Mortality: The Measure of Our Days

Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither; Ripeness is all.  —King Lear For much of human history death was associated at least as much with infancy and youth as with old age. To live to be old was an achievement—a modest victory over death, and one often . . . . Continue Reading »

Briefly Noted

Religion in the New World: The Shaping of Religious Traditions in the United States by richard e. wentz fortress press, 370 pages, $19.95 Wentz, who teaches religion at Arizona State, set out to give the general reader an accessible overview of the diversities of religion in America. He has . . . . Continue Reading »

David Byrne and the Curse of “Lifestyle”

Lately I’ve been noting an interesting linguistic phenomenon: the all-purpose word. You come across it most often in slang, especially the slang of children and adolescents. Take “narly,” for instance—a word which, in my limited acquaintance, seems capable of an almost infinite range of . . . . Continue Reading »

Islam and Modernity

As Communism loses its menacing posture and its threat recedes globally. Western concentration is beginning to focus increasingly on an old and inscrutable foe: Islam. The vast natural resources of the Middle East, the birthplace of Islam, coupled with the inherent political instability of the . . . . Continue Reading »

Toward a Christian Critique of the Arts

Sham Pearls for Real Swine by franky schaeffer wolgemuth & hyatt, 290 pages, $14.95 In 1948, a young American minister from the conservative Bible Presbyterian Church moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, to serve as a missionary to Europe. Intending lo work primarily as an evangelist, this earnest . . . . Continue Reading »

The New “Lapsed”

In the aftermath of the victory over Communist domination of Eastern Europe, previously hidden divisions are surfacing within the churches that played such a crucial role in that struggle. For example, the recent book on religion in the Soviet Union by Michael Bourdeaux of Keston College documents . . . . Continue Reading »

The Achievement of Jacques Maritain

Although the twentieth century was often proclaimed by the church to be the “Age of the Laity,” it remains true that most Catholic discourse is still taken up with the words of popes, bishops, priests, and sisters. Nonetheless, as in the nineteenth century so in the twentieth, a number of lay . . . . Continue Reading »