The Pragmatist’s Prayer
By Essay Issue 55
Why Believe in God? Over the past few years, the Image staff contemplated assembling a symposium based on this simple problem. But we hesitated. Should we pose such a disarmingly straightforward question to artists and writers, who tend to shun the explicit and the rational? Or were we hesitating because the question itself made us…
Read MoreInterrogation
By Essay Issue 55
Why Believe in God? Over the past few years, the Image staff contemplated assembling a symposium based on this simple problem. But we hesitated. Should we pose such a disarmingly straightforward question to artists and writers, who tend to shun the explicit and the rational? Or were we hesitating because the question itself made us…
Read MoreA Fluid Compendium
By Essay Issue 55
Why Believe in God? Over the past few years, the Image staff contemplated assembling a symposium based on this simple problem. But we hesitated. Should we pose such a disarmingly straightforward question to artists and writers, who tend to shun the explicit and the rational? Or were we hesitating because the question itself made us…
Read MoreAtheism is Wasted on the Nonbeliever
By Essay Issue 55
Why Believe in God? Over the past few years, the Image staff contemplated assembling a symposium based on this simple problem. But we hesitated. Should we pose such a disarmingly straightforward question to artists and writers, who tend to shun the explicit and the rational? Or were we hesitating because the question itself made us…
Read MoreA Light Infused
By Essay Issue 55
Why Believe in God? Over the past few years, the Image staff contemplated assembling a symposium based on this simple problem. But we hesitated. Should we pose such a disarmingly straightforward question to artists and writers, who tend to shun the explicit and the rational? Or were we hesitating because the question itself made us…
Read MoreThe Renewable Vow
By Essay Issue 55
Why Believe in God? Over the past few years, the Image staff contemplated assembling a symposium based on this simple problem. But we hesitated. Should we pose such a disarmingly straightforward question to artists and writers, who tend to shun the explicit and the rational? Or were we hesitating because the question itself made us…
Read MoreThe Last Supper
By Poetry Issue 55
Pieces of torn bread on the tablecloth. Plates empty in front of them as if they have just removed the halos they will wear in a few years. Jesus holds out his arms like he is scolding them for such a mess. They look startled, like they are seeing it for the first time: it…
Read MoreA Conversation with Sam Phillips
By Interview Issue 60
In 1987, three years after Harper’s heralded her as the “Queen of Christian Rock,” Leslie Phillips sang these words: “You lock me up / with your expectations / Loosen the pressure you’ve choked me with / I can’t breathe.” That song appeared on an album called The Turning, and the title spoke of her decision…
Read MoreUnapologetic Visibility
By Essay Issue 59
WHAT IS GOD LIKE? It’s safer to say what he’s not. After all, if someone succeeded in writing a novel in French without using the letter e, it must be possible to write a theological treatise without adjectives. Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must do something anyway. But do what? Point with our fingers?…
Read MoreSkin Boat
By Essay Issue 63
Skin Boat: Acts of Faith and Other Navigations The following essay is excerpted from a new book of the same title from Gaspereau Press (www.Gaspereau.com). TODAY I believe in God. A visiting friend and I were listening to a jazz trio one Sunday morning in an Anglican church. The trio led off with a…
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