Does Art Need to Make Us Feel Safe?

Safety has become a very important concept in Christian entertainment. Pick up any Christian parenting magazine that talks about healthy entertainment for your kids, any online guide to what entertainment Christians should or shouldn't indulge in, and you'll find it can almost all be summed up as, "anything outside this very specific zone is unhealthy …

Novels by Christians Worth Reading

Some time ago I started a list of (mostly) nonfiction books that described the evangelical struggle with the arts or how to do art well from a Christian perspective. Since I recently did a series on problems with Christian Fiction novels, it seemed like a good idea to look at relatively modern novels by Christians …

What Makes a Story? (Building a Better Christian Novel Pt 10)

I review Christian books, mostly nonfiction ones but I do get a Christian Fiction novel or two each month. Occasionally I’ll get one that I enjoy, and frequently I’ll give 3 or 4 stars just because I know the author means well and it’s not too terrible. However, most of the time I’m just not …

Me Interviewing Me: A (Hopefully) Early Career Retrospective

This last year when I was working on a new short film and planning a short story series for Halloween, I got to thinking about my earlier creative projects with amateur film group Robotic Flyers Productions. Since the short story series was built around the idea that I was supposedly editing stories written by someone …

Are We Really Evangelicals?

The word evangelicalism has become a bit of a buzzword in the last few years. It comes up a great deal in conversations about where the church today. It comes up in political discussions. As Gerald McDermott noted in his book Can Evangelicals Learn From World Religions? it comes up a lot in the question …

I’ll be off the air for a while…

Starting this week, I will be taking a sabbatical from my usual weekly/biweekly blog to consider new directions. I have have been writing this blog more or less continuously since 2015, and that's given me a chance to cover a lot of ground and consider the ways that art and faith connect on various levels. …

Make It Complicated (Building a Better Christian Novel Pt. 9)

I review Christian books, mostly nonfiction ones but I do get a Christian Fiction novel or two each month. Occasionally I’ll get one that I enjoy, and frequently I’ll give 3 or 4 stars just because I know the author means well and it’s not too terrible. However, most of the time I’m just not …

The Long Strange Road to God (Building A Better Christian Novel Pt. 8)

I review Christian books, mostly nonfiction ones but I do get a Christian Fiction novel or two each month. Occasionally I’ll get one that I enjoy, and frequently I’ll give 3 or 4 stars just because I know the author means well and it’s not too terrible. However, most of the time I’m just not …

Good (and Foolish) Country People (Building a Better Christian Novel Pt. 7)

I review Christian books, mostly nonfiction ones but I do get a Christian Fiction novel or two each month. Occasionally I’ll get one that I enjoy, and frequently I’ll give 3 or 4 stars just because I know the author means well and it’s not too terrible. However, most of the time I’m just not …

Beyond Words (Building A Better Christian Novel Pt. 6)

I review Christian books, mostly nonfiction ones but I do get a Christian Fiction novel or two each month. Occasionally I’ll get one that I enjoy, and frequently I’ll give 3 or 4 stars just because I know the author means well and it’s not too terrible. However, most of the time I’m just not …