Christianity and Literature articles from September 2004

Christianity and Literature archives from September 2004

From the editors.(Editorial)
September 22, 2004... We wish to commence our work as Co-editors with a threefold expression of gratitude. First, we acknowledge the work of Robert Snyder, Editor of Christianity and Literature from 1989 to 2004. Rob's professionalism, eye for detail, and unflagging...

"The passionate pursuit of the real": Christianity and literature in our time.(Editorial)
September 22, 2004... Editors' Note: With this issue a new chapter begins in the story of this journal, with new editors and a new home on the West Coast. Darryl Tippens writes from a dual position--as a long-standing member of the Conference on Christianity and...

Contested translations: the Gospel versus foreign missionaries in John Munonye's Obi.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2004... A thematically significant scene early in John Munonye's Obi recounts the missionary priest's first sermon in the village of Umudiobia, which is on the topic of polygamy. This he condemns as "that rock" on which "many a man's faith has...

Samsons all.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2004... Samsons all we thought love was fragile to keep behind glass or leave in a cedar chest with ammonia and cloth for a festival or morrow, not now, not yet. we panted and moved as though love were...

Sex, money, and food as spiritual signposts in Doris Betts's Sharp Teeth of Love.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2004... "I am a storyteller whose themes are informed by faith, but I do not preach it," writes Doris Betts. "In fact, one reader mailed back one of my novels complaining that it was filthy; with a magic marker she had blacked out everything she found...

Samson was hair-brained.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2004... Samson was hair-brained some other voice punctures us with dazzling clarity love (it says) is robust as the day strong as earth's fibres common as dust. it never depends on the three H's: health, happiness and...

Francis Phelan in purgatory: William Kennedy's Catholic imagination in Ironweed.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2004... A cradle Catholic born in 1928, William Kennedy says that he ceased long ago to "give allegiance to the Church in any formal or ritualistic way" (Nelson 221). When asked by interviewers about the influence of his Catholic upbringing and...

Prophecy.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2004... prophecy prophecy is a hand held above the flame too close and too long-broken glass scraped by the mouth, sunlight at midday burning the eyes. prophecy is a refraction of light into colours, an orchestra...

The figure of Jerusalem: Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2004... "The beautiful golden city is the heart and soul of the Jewish people. You cannot live without a heart and soul. If you want one simple word to symbolize all of Jewish history, that word would be Jerusalem." --Teddy Kolleck, Israeli Mayor of...

Miriam: a Postlude from Numbers 12.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2004... Miriam: A Postlude from Numbers 12 Absently, I worry flakes of skin, the patches of white marring my flesh. Jealousy. Pride. I scratch the leprous price. Below me, in the distance the camp awaits. All know...

A comment on the state of the art: poetry in 2004.(Dialogue)
September 22, 2004... Books of poetry reviewed in this essay: Philokalia: New and Selected Poems. Scott Cairns. Lincoln, Nebraska: Zoo Press, 2002. Pp. 163. Water Lines. Luci Shaw. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. Pp. 97. The Man Who Loves Cezanne. Dabney...

"That was a good story you wrote": Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy.(Dialogue)(Flannery O'Connor and the Christ-Haunted South)(Walker Percy's Search for Community)(Peculiar Crossroads: Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and Catholic Vision in Postwar Southern Fiction)(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... Ralph C. Wood. Flannery O'Connor and the Christ-Haunted South. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. ISBN 0-8028-2117-0. xii + 272 pp. $22.00. John F. Desmond. Walker Percy's Search for Community. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004. ISBN...

Elisha's Bones.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2004... Elisha's Bones II Kings 13:20-21 What was it like in such premature burial, tossed into another's tomb, ears deaf to the men's shouts beyond you, feet numb to the pebbles pressing upon them, breath...

Houses of the Interpreter: Reading Scripture, Reading Culture.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... Houses of the Interpreter: Reading Scripture, Reading Culture. By David Lyle Jeffrey. Provost Series. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-91895489-4. Pp. xi + 288. $39.95. This welcome anthology of critical essays by David...

C. S. Lewis, Collected Letters: Volume II, Books, Broadcasts, and War 1931-1949.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... C. S. Lewis, Collected Letters: Volume II, Books, Broadcasts, and War 1931-1949. Edited by Walter Hooper. London: HarperCollins, 2004. ISBN 0-00-628146-X. Pp. vii + 1,132. 35.00 [pounds sterling]. When I ended my review of C. S. Lewis,...

The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief. By Richard Barber. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-674-01390-5. Pp. xiv + 464. $27.95. The quest for the Holy Grail continues in Richard Barber's careful and readable account of a...

Jonathan Edwards: a Life.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... Jonathan Edwards: A Life. By George M. Marsden. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-300-09693-3. Pp. xxii + 615. $35.00. Jonathan Edwards sought to replenish Calvinism with the more advanced ideas of the European Enlightenment,...

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis in the Late Jacobean Pulpit.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... John Donne and Conformity in Crisis in the Late Jacobean Pulpit. By Jeanne Shami. Cambridge, Eng.: D. S. Brewer, 2003. ISBN 0 85991 789 4. Pp. ix + 318. $85.00 / 50.00 [pounds sterling]. This book studies the sermons of John Donne during...

Contending for the Faith: The Church's Engagement with Culture.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... Contending for the Faith: The Church's Engagement with Culture. By Ralph C. Wood. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-918-95486-X. Pp. xii + 218. $26.95 (Paper). This is a book review I shouldn't be writing, given my various time...

George MacDonald: Images of His World.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... George MacDonald: Images of His World. By Rolland Hein. Photographs by Larry E. Fink. Abilene, Texas: Pasture Spring Press, 2004. ISBN 0-9670760-7-2. Pp. 110. $40.00 (limited edition). Rolland Hein (Wheaton College) and Larry Fink...

The Road to Emmaus.(Poem)
September 22, 2004... The Road to Emmaus It's not the friendliest of villages, Emmaus, the people parochial, as desert people are, bound up in the herding and bartering of beasts, the vines on its terraces encumbered with thorns, the...

Ephphatha.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2004... Ephphatha And taking him aside from the multitude privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue, and looking up to heaven, he signed, and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." --Mark...