You can tell the strange disconnect between the holidays of October 31 and November 1 by the fact that the first is popularly called Halloween, and the second All Saints’ Day. Hallowmas and All Hallows’ Day are among the other names for the church feast of November 1, and from these names, of course, Halloween…
Tag: Christianity
Lazarus, Come from the Dead
I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all. — T.S. Eliot, “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” In the last glimpse we catch of Lazarus, he is sitting at a dinner held in Christ’s honor, the object of the crowd’s curiosity and the target of…
One Conception From Another
The Bible makes repeated mention of magic and witches, usually in unsparing terms. We know well the scriptural opprobrium against witches; we are in danger of forgetting the scriptural idea of witches. We all have an idea of what a witch is, but the idea is almost unavoidably an amalgam. We piece it together of…
Art Under Negotiation
One of the purposes of this site is to explore the meeting of Christianity with culture broadly, and with art particularly, whether that meeting is synthesis, negotiation, or conflict. That exploration grows more and more relevant as our society transforms into a post-Christian culture. Still, the meeting of Christianity and art is as old as…
A Christian Twist
(I am going to state right here that this is not my finest work. But I wrote it under the influence of a summer cold, and this is as good as it’s going to get, people.) Christian speculative fiction, as a whole, has evolved along distinct lines from secular speculative fiction, acquiring its own…
Uncommon Knowledge
Once I made what is, I fancy, a common mistake in college and registered for an elective English class. At one point in the course, the professor told us to make allusions that our audience would understand, and furthermore to consider our classmates our audience. To illustrate what our audience would not understand, he asked…
Let My People Think
In the lately-renewed controversy surrounding The Shack, two defenses of the book, and now movie, stand out to me. Both are meant to silence theological critiques. “It’s just a story,” runs the first. The second is more varied and a bit harder to sum up, but it turns on how the book makes people feel,…
Review: Last Stand at Lighthouse Point
Frank Denton knows that he’s unlucky. So when it becomes gradually obvious that he has made more powerful enemies than he quite realized, and he’s about to lose his job, and he’s running out of money again … it only makes sense to leave. Drake Sanders knows he’s lucky. With a beautiful woman he’s ready…
CSFF Blog Tour: Keep the Salt, Shine the Light
The most outstanding element of Jill Williamson’s Safe Lands Trilogy is its world-building. From the opening pages of Captives, she created two worlds, orbiting no more than a rising mountain apart and yet utterly distinct. In the Safe Lands, all is pleasure and comfort and convenience, greased by the omnipresent wonders of technology. In little…
CSFF Blog Tour: Like a Crusader
“Crusader perched like a gargoyle on a second floor ledge …” So begins Numb – with Crusaders and gargoyles, icons of the Middle Ages and the Catholic Church. Although there are obvious and significant differences between the True Church of Numb and the medieval Catholic Church, there are also definite similarities. The power exercised in…