This includes any blog posts I’ve written that talk specifically about spiritual ideas.
Frederick Buechner died yesterday. I haven't had the chance to read many of his works yet, but I discovered him in a class where we read "Faith and Fiction," where I discovered this line: The danger, I suppose, is that you start out with the idea that sainthood is something people achieve, that you get …
Today, June 13, is the birthday of Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957). Sayers wrote many interesting books in her lifetime, but may be best remembered for her detective stories. "In all [these] stories you will experience the battle between Good and Evil. There are wicked people here." - Otto Penzler1 It's been said more than a …
Continue reading Dorothy Sayers, Cozy Mystery, and the Murder of God
Since today is the end of the Lent/Easter season, I decided to look back at some of the books I've been reading since Ash Wednesday. I read fairly quickly and will read almost anything once, so it was a mixed bag of items. However, there were a few books that dealt with religious themes or …
Today, April 9, marks 77 years to the day that theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was executed for his involvement in the most famous of several plots to assassinate Hitler. As a friend observed yesterday in Inkling Folk Fellowship's Memorium for Bonhoeffer, he died exactly three weeks before Hitler committed suicide in his bunker. Within two …
Continue reading Remembering Dietrich Bonhoeffer 77 Years Later
In my concluding thoughts post about high church Christianity and art, I ended by saying that "good art must serve the work." This point may best be summed if we remember the famous quote from Chariots of Fire where Eric Liddell describes how he reconciled his Olympic aspirations with his calling to be a missionary. …
In my first "sidetrails" post, I talked about how the sentimental stories that truly survive are ones with something substantial behind them. The flipside of that is so many sentimental stories lack substance and don't survive, and many even enter a weird zone. Peruse the romantic-comedy/family melodrama/faith-based fiction section of your bookstore (or streaming service) …
In the last few blog posts of my series on how evangelicals differ from high church Christians on entertainment, I’ve discussed several trends. I’ve talked about how suburban values inform evangelical institutions, how high church liturgy encourages a recognition of sin that evangelicals often miss, and other related ideas. Many of these ideas have been …
In a recent post about "kid-friendly entertainment," I pointed out that for a certain audience, "Christian art" and "family-friendly" automatically go together. You can also use the term "sentimental," or "inspirational" to describe that kind of art, which dominates faith-based films and Christian Romance novels. There are several reasons why "Christian" and "family-friendly" don't always …
Continue reading Sentimentality and Substance (Sidetrails 1)
I recently finished a 7-part series on why evangelical Christians have often struggled to create good art, compared to Christians who come from high church traditions (Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, etc.). I will discuss a few points (such as the need for art that captures "the thinginess of things") in more detail in "sidetrail" …
Continue reading Why Do High Churches Get All the Good Artists: Concluding Thoughts
The following is part of a series on American evangelicals, considering why American Christian artists who produce high quality work tend to Catholic, Anglican, Eastern Orthodox or other high church denominations. Several years ago, I was in a Christian college's creative writing class where everyone had to write a novella on a topic of their choice. Since …
G. Connor Salter 