Delivered through the waters
The Red Sea, the baptistery, and the birth canal
A life worth living, but for how long?
In their new novels, Dara Horn and Chloe Benjamin play with themes of mortality and free will.
Dreaming in Israel
In Aharon Appelfeld's novel, a teenage Holocaust survivor sleeps, remembers, and learns to speak anew.
Haunting particularities
To meet others as God meets us—prickly and imprecise and difficult though we may sometimes be—is a kind of grace.
Material values
Scott Dannemiller narrates his family's year of simpler living. By the end, he acknowledges that "stuff" is not bad.
Running to the Fire, by Tim Bascom
Tim Bascom experienced a revolution through a teenager's sensibility. But despite the great material this provides, his memoir has a plodding feel.
Shall we be changed?
Mary Miller’s The Last Days of California exactly captures an important aspect of the sort of rapture-ready Christianity I was raised and educated in: the unwillingness to face mo...
Lila in community
At the end of Marilynne Robinson’s latest novel Lila, the title character envisions heaven in an intensely communal way. In light of that communal vision, Century associate editor Amy Frykholm gathered together three avid Robinson readers—Rachel Stone, Peter Boumgarden, and Amber Noel—for a conversation about the novel.
Why I still love the 1982 version of Annie
I was delighted to see Annie remade with an African American girl in the title role. But the new version doesn't do justice to the original's progressive vision.
The Antidote, by Oliver Burkeman
If positive thinking leaves you cold, Oliver Burkeman's The Antidote will be just what the title promises.
Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish, by David Rakoff
It's easy to write off David Rakoff's novel in verse as a cliché. But Rakoff was master enough of his craft that his rhymes lapse into doggerel only when he chooses.
Clearly Invisible, by Marcia Alesan Dawkins
In Clearly Invisible, Marcia Alesan Dawkins explores passing—presenting oneself as a member of a racial group to which one does not belong. Dawkins argues that passing is a rhetorical act that “forces us to think and rethink what, exactly, makes a person black, white or ‘other,’ and why we care.”
Pray and put up a (nonviolent) fight
It hasn’t even been six months since I quaked irrationally with fear as my husband went off with a friend to a sleepy little cinema in western Pennsylvania, weeks after the Aurora shooting....
The gospel of personal responsibility and obesity
While I was away a few weeks ago, regular reader and fellow blogger Charity Jill tweeted to me about speaker/blogger Shane Blackshear’s post “It’s Probably Time We All Talked About Obesity and the Church”.
Shane’s post is not particularly unique in its outlook; over a year ago, Marcus Thompson, a pastor in Oakland, CA, published a piece on Relevant called“The Immorality of Gluttony” that expresses very similar concerns. (I responded to it here.)
Seeking the Straight and Narrow, by Lynne Gerber
Lynne Gerber's interaction with the discourses of evangelical weight loss and sexual reorientation is engaging, surprising and admirably charitable.