The story goes that one day Filippo Brunelleschi, the goldsmith who would go on to become the most important architect in Europe and arguably the originator of the Renaissance, devises a practical joke he and his buddies play on their mutual friend, Manetto the woodworker. The gist of it is that they contrive to convince…

Just released by Oxford University Press, When Art Disrupts Religion: Aesthetic Experience and the Evangelical Mind has received praise from such leading scholars as David Morgan and Randall Balmer. Image editor Gregory Wolfe recently interviewed the author, Philip Salim Francis. Image: Your book has the provocative title When Art Disrupts Religion: Aesthetic Experience and the…

The following is a response to Morgan Meis’s letter posted yesterday. Dear Morgan: I’m enjoying this conversation but at times I worry that you’re playing Glaucon to my Socrates. In other words, just egging the “master” on. I want to be sure you’re not just tossing up softballs for me to take a swing at.…

Today Morgan Meis continues his periodic exchanges with Image founder Gregory Wolfe. Dear Greg, Thanks for your response to my latest “challenge,” as you put it, on the question of beauty. I love all the things you have to say and find myself both moved and convinced by the nuanced, complicated version of beauty you’ve…

February is offseason in Rome, so today the city is a little gray, a little quiet, if ever it could be such a thing. I’m standing on the steps of San Luigi Dei Francesi church, buzzing a little from a sugary espresso. I’m gearing up to enter the church and see, for the fourth time…

The following is a response to Morgan Meis’s letter posted yesterday. Dear Morgan: Thanks for throwing down this particular gauntlet. Yes, we adopted Dostoevsky’s phrase from The Idiot, where one of the characters attributes the saying “beauty will save the world” to the eponymous hero of the novel, Prince Myshkin. I’m well aware that any…

Today Morgan Meis continues his periodic exchanges with Image founder Gregory Wolfe.  Dear Greg, When we first started our conversation (see posts here, here and here for background), I thought we were having a debate about the declining relevance of religious intellectuals in today’s public realm. But that’s not what it was really about. At…

I recently found remnants from college and grad school genetics classes: karyotypes—sheets of paper with photos of chromosomes clumsily glued to their forty-six places. My professors would usually hand us an envelope filled with tiny chromosome photos on Friday to be assembled over the weekend. I sat in the sun on Saturday afternoons, poring over…

A few weeks ago, I visited the Martin Luther: Art and the Reformation exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Before I left to catch the train, I popped my Swedish great-aunt’s small ceramic squirrel into my bag, knowing that she’d want to come in some way. (She’s likely forcing a plate of pepparkakor and…