The silence beyond all enduring I read Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence a few years after it was first published in English in 1969. I…
Denis Haack
Denis is the author of The Rest of Success: What the World Didn’t Tell You About Having It All and has written articles for such journals as Reformation & Revival Journal, Eternity, Covenant, and World. He holds a Master of Arts in Theological Studies degree from Covenant Seminary in St. Louis.
Sapiens (Yuval Harari, 2015) and Homo Deus (Yuval Harari, 2017)
A Secular Story Yuval Noah Harari, who teaches world history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, knows the importance of myth and story. Ideas,…
Every Moment Holy (2017)
When We Wonder How to Pray I make my living with words. Still, I often run out of them at just the wrong moment.…
Light in a Darkened Room
When I teach on film and have the chance to recommend books I always include the ones written by Roy Anker. In fact, I…
Discernment Exercise: Drawing a Line With Idiots
Discernment / Exercises / The Skill
I know, I know. My mother always told me not to call anyone an idiot, but really, what other word will do? I’ve just…
Terrorizing the Masses: Identity, Mass Shootings, and the Media Construction of “Terror” (Ruth DeFoster, 2017)
Shaped by media in an age of toxic masculinity A question: how often do mass shootings occur in America? Well, it depends on how…
Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017) & Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)
Being human in a world of machines Some questions never go away. We may ignore them, or be so distracted or addicted or busy…
When to Argue or Not
Community / Discernment / Pluralistic World
Sometimes I swear it feels like everyone has become the worst sort of fundamentalist: quick to argue, slow to listen, no, unable to listen,…
How Do You Know That? (Ellis Potter, 2016)
On believing, knowing and finding “Epistemology,” Ellis Potter insists, “is not a disease” (p. 9). It is also not something boring we can ignore.…
Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1650 (Carlos Eire, 2016)
A necessary, perilous venture I ordered Carlos Eire’s new book because I am entranced with his earlier one, Waiting for Snow in Havana (2003).…