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The Strange Persistence of Religion in Contemporary Art

By James Elkins & Jonathan A. Anderson Interview

We’re talking here about two projects: rereading art history to recover a wider context for religious meaning, and rereading it to recover a wider sense of the art historical project. You are aiming at the first, which is the larger and more important one, but our examples have been mainly the second, which would be a tonic to the discipline.

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Tentatively, Religion

By Christian Detisch Poetry

What! Did the Hand then of the Potter shake?                             —Rubaiyat The kick wheel turns against the spondees of her feet —clop-clop—upon the floor: amorphous clay shines like a seal’s skin. We are uncarved blocks, says the Tao. Hum-hum, says the wheel. And I am Yahweh at dust, she says, her hands tucked and carving…

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Walking the Dog Last Night

By Jóanes Nielsen Poetry

While my dog examined the yellow messages On lampposts And in the dry grass And morsed back messages of its own I asked myself Am I holding the dog by the leash Or is it the other way around And the dog is holding me? Maybe it seems foolish to involve God in this But…

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Meeting-House Fire

By Marilyn Nelson Poetry

_________Lyme, Connecticut, 3 July 1815 Nor’easter and calm shine, high tide and neap, combined lives shuttled between births and deaths, from baptisms to funerals, amen. Mehitabel, Uriah, Moses, John. Robert, Elihu, Azanaha, Love. Wakes, marriages, fallings-out and laughter, arguments, broken hearts, betrayals, guilt: thus time shaped a community of faith. Jerusha, Wealthy, Esther, Hepzibah. Moses,…

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Screening Mystery

By Ron Austin Essay

FOR nearly a generation in Hollywood, a gulf has existed between the secular and religious perspectives. It is a rift that appeared in the sixties for many reasons, not least as an expression of a cultural rebellion which was arguably both liberating and destructive. But one result was the lamentable loss on screen of an…

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Patron Saints

By Gregory Wolfe Essay

I ONCE heard a story about the late Walker Percy that seems to illustrate the plight of so many struggling artists down through the ages. Percy graduated from medical school in the 1940s but soon came down with tuberculosis and had to spend a couple years in a sanatorium. During that time he underwent a profound…

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Two-Way Traffic

By Gregory Wolfe Essay

IN A RECENT essay, poet Ira Sadoff issued a sweeping denunciation of what he calls the “spiritualization of American poetry.” Entitled “Trafficking in the Radiant” and published in the July/August American Poetry Review, the essay asserts that contemporary poets have been influenced by the resurgence of religiosity in our culture, with disastrous results. “My contention…

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Bent Body, Lamb

By Molly McCully Brown Essay

Really, though, I’m struggling. Is it absurd to adhere to a religion whose most central rituals my body won’t even let me perform? What am I to make of all the parables in the New Testament where Jesus heals the crippled and the lame? And, most importantly, if I believe we’ll all eventually be resurrected back into the world, then is this body—this bruised, broken, wreck of a form—the one I’m stuck with for all time?

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The Broom

By Yossel Birstein Short Story

THE THREE OF US got on bus 20 and rode from Ir Ganim to the Jaffa Gate of the Old City. The other two, a lieutenant-general from the air force and an Australian reporter who hated Jews, sat facing me, knees touching knees. I reminded them who I was, the man who when young swore…

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John Wesley, After Field Preaching

By Jill Bergkamp Poetry

Among the marsh marigold and cowslip, I found myself speaking of the spirits’ fruits, blackberries tangled on the vine. Spire pointing skyward proclaiming piety— this is where I left you to your tailored prayers. At Kingswood Hill I climbed and entered a topography of grace among the miners, unabashed, spoke that all our gifts are…

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