Laura Brown strings together snippets of memory from the “ragtag communities” that have taught her how to stitch her own “book of common prayers.”

If studying theology has taught me one thing, then it is always to be prepared with an apology. By apology here, I mean to invoke both its technical and colloquial meanings. When introducing myself as a student of theology, I often am required to offer a defense of theology as a discipline independent of religious […]

Dr. Marc Bekoff is Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado. He’s written numerous books in his discipline, has been on television many times, and is considered one of the foremost writers in the realm of animal welfare. He was also kind enough to write the foreword for my co-edited […]

In “For Hannah,” Robert Vander Lugt tries to narrate the experience of watching a child cling to life in a hospital bed and encounters difficulty in the motions and effects of prayer, in how to tell such a story in the first place.

Over the last week, thousands of Palestinians, Jews, and internationals protested the illegal and inhumane treatment of Palestinian prisoners.  800 Palestinian prisoners declared a one-day fast in protest of Israel’s detention policies, an act of solidarity with four men who continue an ongoing hunger strike calling an end to the unjust detention of Palestinians without […]

  If not for his tragic suicide back in 2008, today would have been the fifty-first birthday of award-winning writer David Foster Wallace. By nearly any account, Wallace was the greatest talent of his generation. In addition to his sparkling fiction, which included sprawling, encyclopedic novels such as Infinite Jest and beautifully crystalline short short stories […]

[The following post is written by, once again, the very sexy, ex-MMA thrower-downer-turned-Anabaptist sympathizer, Matthew Morin. Take it away, Matt . . .] In a letter that unintentionally highlights the value of a liberal arts education, engineer-turned-university-president James Wagner recently lauded the three-fifths compromise as a “pragmatic half-victory” that brought “the country more closely together.” […]

Cultural Despisers William Connolly, in his 2008 work Capitalism and Christianity, American Style, sets out firstly to diagnose how the ‘capitalist project’ has been perverted and warped by its resonant relationship with conservative right-wing Christian religious beliefs.[1] The religious right within Evangelicalism in America in relation to capitalism has given rise to a variety of […]

The Filmwell landscape is well populated with Certified Copy posts (like the wonderful meditations found here and here). And it seems appropriate that this film is considered and reconsidered at this site. As a new contributing writer, I almost feel as if offering a post on this Kiarostami is like a rite of passage into […]