Collaborations on a Blue Jacket: Seattle Artist Spotlight on Tara Ward
Click play on the YouTube video below to watch the music video “Circles” from Tara Ward’s Revelations of a Blue Jacket. Thevideo was created by Chuck Potrykus. Revelations of a Blue Jacket is a concept album created, directed, and performed by Seattle artist Tara Ward. The album includes contributions from musicians and visual artists who tell the story of Cordelia,... Read More
Facing Suffering: Human Rights Tragedies and the Divine Comedy
I’m going to start with a claim that I can’t actually substantiate but that I hope you’ll entertain as likely or at least interesting: I think that people who watch a lot of human rights documentaries have a problem.1 To be fair, I think that people who avoid watching them also have this problem, although they deal with it in another way. The problem is this: it seems... Read More
Stories of New Creation, Reconciliation, and Hope: An Interview with Chris Rice
In a world torn by warfare, genocide, poverty, ethnic violence, and countless other injustices, reconciliation seems to be the most important need of our time, and yet the call for reconciliation has in some ways become trendy and superficial. As a result, while the idea of reconciliation has mobilized more people than ever, we are waking up to find that beneath all the talk... Read More
The Jew from Nazareth and the Problem of Whiteness: J. Kameron Carter’s Theological Account of Race
J. Kameron Carter. Race: A Theological Account. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008. 504 pages. $28.00 hardcover (Amazon). Click here or on the image to purchase Race from Amazon.com and help support The Other Journal. J. Kameron Carter’s recent book, Race: A Theological Account, is a wrench thrown into the frustratingly predictable modern academic discourse on race.... Read More
Down from Soul Mountain: An Interview with Marilyn Nelson, Part II
Marilyn Nelson’s poems explore the history and landscape of the American experience, particularly the African-American experience. Her thoughtful, inquisitive poems span a broad range of forms and subjects, from free-verse poems in the voice of a monk, Abba Jacob, to a crown of sonnets written as a memorial for Emmett Till. In Part I of this interview, she discusses the role... Read More
Down from Soul Mountain: An Interview with Marilyn Nelson, Part I
Marilyn Nelson’s poems explore the history and landscape of the American experience, particularly the African-American experience. Her thoughtful, inquisitive poems span a broad range of forms and subjects, from free-verse poems in the voice of a monk, Abba Jacob, to a crown of sonnets written as a memorial for Emmett Till. In Part I of this interview, she discusses the role... Read More
The Revivification of Racial Reconciliation: Peter Heltzel’s Jesus and Justice, an Engagement with Evangelicals, Justice, and Race
Peter G. Heltzel. Jesus and Justice: Evangelicals, Race, and American Politics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009. 288 pages. $25.44 hardcover (Amazon). Click here or on the image to purchase Jesus and Justice from Amazon.com and help support The Other Journal. For many years, American discourse on race has focused solely on the oppression caused by racial discrimination... Read More
O God, Where Art Thou? A Review of A Serious Man
In the song “Placebo Headwound,” from the Flaming Lips 1995 album Clouds Taste Metallic, Wayne Coyne sings, “If God hears all my questions / how come there’s never an answer?” This question seemed so subversive that I felt compelled to hide the record from my parents. Yet perhaps my fears were unwarranted, because by the time they were teenagers in the early ‘60s,... Read More
Fearless Speech, Courageous Eyes: A Theological Engagement with Freedom of Expression
Is anything more sacred to democracy than freedom of speech?1 And in our late modern world, is anything more sacred than democracy? Indeed, despite all the laments about the erosion of absolutes and a proliferation of perspectives, isn’t freedom the last absolute standing—the one prized universal that launches not only a thousand ships, but ten thousand missiles, a hundred... Read More
Racism, Art, and the Darkness of Truth: An Interview with Barry Moser
Among his over three hundred works of art, Barry Moser has often pushed the envelope of expectation to portray unorthodox perspectives and uncomfortable subject matter. He is also the first artist to create a complete individually illustrated Bible since Gustave Doré’s La Sainte Bible of 1865. In this interview, Moser shares his experiences and thoughts about racism and... Read More
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