Rachel K. Ward

Waxing Hot: A Postmodern Tradition of the New

The iPhone is new again, Apple.com   Ever changing, like a Joyless eye, That finds no object worth its constancy? “To the Moon,” Percy Bysshe Shelley   The turn of the moon has long fascinated our human desire for novelty. In our postmodern moment, we have a focus on the new as if unique to our […]

Bryne Lewis

Boredom and the Possibility of Community

Several years ago, I had the privilege of serving as a Eucharistic minister in a small church community in upstate New York. I had come to the Episcopal Church as an adult after a childhood spent in evangelical congregations of varying degrees of fundamentalism. My mother was a converted Catholic and preferred the emphasis these […]

Matthew Tan

St. Evagrius of Pontus and Redeeming Time in Postmodernity

The following is a guest post by Matthew Tan. Matthew is a Lecturer in Theology and Philosophy at Campion College Australia. Currently he is a Visiting Professor in Catholic Studies and a Research Fellow at the Centre for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology at DePaul University in Chicago. Matthew is also the editor of the […]

Bryne Lewis

Those Which were Possessed by Devils

Pop-culture, Demons and Philosophy Recently, I enlisted a friend to see The Conjuring with me. The movie claims to be based on real events, which seems to be a standard feature for these types of films, and depicts the haunting of a family upon moving into a new home with a grisly past, yet another […]

Bruce Benson

Book Symposium: Liturgy as a Way of Life (Benson’s Response to Marx)

As we close our Book Symposium on Bruce Ellis Benson’s Liturgy as a Way of Life, Bruce offers another provocative and excellent response to one of our reviewers, Nathaniel Marx. Commenting on highbrow culture, worldview seminars, tradition, and what might be called “petrified rituals” (my words, not his) in liturgy, Bruce reminds us of the […]

Nathaniel Marx

Book Symposium: Liturgy as a Way of Life (Nathaniel Marx)

In our final review of the Symposium of Bruce Ellis Benson’s Liturgy as a Way of Life, Nathaniel Marx approaches Benson’s book from a different angle, engaging him and his argument with a unique cultural phenomenon that seems at first glance far away from Benson’s topic. But Marx’s cultural exegesis proves just as good as […]

Bruce Benson

Book Symposium: Liturgy as a Way of Life (Benson’s Response to Phillips)

Following up on Monday’s opening review of Bruce Ellis Benson’s Liturgy as a Way of Life by Ed Phillips, Bruce offers his response below. —————- First, I want to thank Ed Phillips for such a thoughtful response to my book. It’s always a pleasure to respond to reviewers who have interacted with one’s work at […]

Rachel K. Ward

Teaser: The Postmodern Fashion of Provisional Views

Prada, teaser for Candy, by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola   “Ethical, juridical, or political responsibility, if there is any, consists in deciding on the strategic orientation to give to this problematic…for which truth, no more than reality, is not an object given in advance that it would be a matter of simply reflecting adequately.” Jacques […]