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Reviews

For the Beauty of the Church: Casting a Vision for the Arts

For the past year and a half I have served on the building committee of our Midwestern Lutheran church. Together with our architect we planned and then built a new sanctuary and fellowship hall in a remarkably short period of time. Little from my experience as an architectural historian prepared me for the conversations we…
July 15, 2011
Reviews

God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution

In God of Liberty, Thomas Kidd presents a thoughtful and well-argued discussion of the role of religion in eighteenth-century America. Beginning with the Great Awakening and continuing through the Election of 1800, Kidd capably discusses ideas about faith and God and how they influenced the changes in America produced by the American Revolu-tion. In doing…
July 15, 2011
Reviews

Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir

There are many ways for someone to tell her or his life’s story, and at least as many ways of hearing the story that is told. Stanley Hauerwas’s recounting of his life, like the man himself, is intriguing, in no small part because he recognizes the disagreements in meaning and method, together with the potential…
July 15, 2011
Reviews

On Becoming a Christian Educator in Social Work

Michael Sherr’s book, On Becoming a Christian Educator in Social Work, begins with Sherr’s personal story, including his conversion from Conservative Judaism to evangelical Christianity and his reasons for writing the book. Sherr relates that the seeds for this project were planted while he and some colleagues were facilitating a workshop on faith-learning integration in…
July 15, 2011
Reviews

Reinhold Niebuhr on Politics, Religion, and Christian Faith

God, grant me the serenityTo accept the things I cannot change;Courage to change the things I can;And wisdom to know the difference. This modified version of Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer” may be the most recognizable prayer in America, with the possible exceptions of the Lord’s Prayer taught by Jesus (Matthew 6:9-13, Luke 11:2-4), the ubiquitous…
July 15, 2011
Introduction

Introduction to the Theme Issue: Reel Presence

It seems fitting that this special CSR issue on intersections between “faith and film” should coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Walker Percy’s first novel, The Moviegoer. Ever since Percy, a strange brew of Southerner, Catholic, existentialist, self-trained semiotician, and non-practicing MD, won the National Book Award for his 1961 novel about a 30-year-old stockbroker’s…
July 15, 2011
Review Essays

Strange Bedfellows: Faith and Film—A Review Essay

My education in film came in my 20s when a friend named Paul recognized our town’s need for an “art-house” theater: a place where foreign and independent film might provide an intelligent alternative to Hollywood fare. (That was the era before VCRs and DVDs made foreign films readily accessible.) Renting the cafeteria of a Montessori…
July 15, 2011
Article

Murals, Icons, Movies: Christian Imagery in Mexican Cinema

Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro Iñárritu, and Alfonso Cuarón: Hollywood’s “three amigos” have enjoyed recent financial and critical success and raised the profile of Mexican film-making in the process. In this paper, Scott DeVries finds that the cinematic aesthetics in films from these highly-regarded filmmakers represent the culmination of a long history of Mexican filmmaking, one…
July 14, 2011