Reading a Liturgy of Confession: Liturgy as Forma Formans

The form worship takes reveals has certain assumptions about how people learn built into it. Reading liturgy from a formalist perspective, one that pays attention to form, reveals much about what those assumptions are.

Caleb Molstad | University of Minnesota Between Cities | Spring 2019

Composing Liturgical Space: A Design Thesis

What if there was a way to spatially communicate the progression of feelings we experience within the different parts of liturgy?

Matthew Barley | The Brown & RISD Cornerstone | Spring 2016

The Hidden Life of Liturgical Chant in Rachmaninoff’s Music

Rachmaninoff, always inspired by the elder Tchaikovsky, also decided to try his hand at liturgical music, but unlike most of his contemporaries, he found something very affecting about it, and after studying chant in depth, he composed a significant amount for the Church.

Ben Costello | The Hopkins Dialectic | Fall 2016

The Gift of Confession

The desire to confess may seem counter-intuitive. Obviously the seeker-sensitive movement assumed this was the last thing non-Christians wanted to do.

James K. A. Smith | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2014

Tweeting Indulgences

We stand as careful guardians of church practice, not as nostalgic Luddites, when we say that issuing a plenary indulgence to those who follow an event over social media deserves a cautious examination.

Michael Toy | Princeton Revisions | Fall 2013

A Response to “Anatomy of the Soul: The Neuroscience of Christian Spirituality”

Thompson is careful to make sure readers understand this nuanced dance between brain and behavior, for he maintains that once people do understand it, they can begin to change how they approach their relationships with God and other people.

Richard Lopez | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2013

Religious but Not Spiritual

I don’t feel a spiritual energy, a spiritual connection, or a spiritual anything – especially when held in tension with the concrete, empirical, and measurable.

Michael Toy | Princeton Revisions | Fall 2013

Symbols of God

But how are symbols to be used when the divine—whether as God the Father, the divine aspect of Christ, or the Holy Spirit—is as St. John of Damascus puts it: “uncircumscribed and unable to be represented?”

Rachel Himes | The Brown & RISD Cornerstone | Spring 2013

Eternity in the Moment

To respond to Nietzsche’s criticism, and indeed to contemporary understandings of time and meaning, the Christian needs to point out a model for a life that partakes in its own positive affirmation, but in the right way.

David Nolan | The Williams Telos | Spring 2013

June 2019