Brightly colored illustration representing Greenpeace, Earth First!, and the Yippees!

The Greening of Psychedelics

The formation of Greenpeace and Earth First! in the 1970s was a reformation within the largest cadre of militant psychedelicists, the Yippies!. By J. Christian Greer

Autumn/Winter 2022

Featured

Illustration of bright spheres surrounded by menacing dark tentacles

A Theological Reckoning with ‘Bad Trips’

Reducing transcendence to its therapeutic potential ignores volumes of wisdom from traditions that emphasize the dangers of nonordinary experience. By Rachael Petersen

Islamic calligraphy verse from the Qur’an

What Can Ancient Spiritual Poetry Teach Us about Living?

A working definition of sacred poetry rises directly out of this poet’s experience as a child praying in Arabic: earnest, musical language meant to thin the partition between a person and a divine. By Kaveh Akbar

Painting of a weeping young woman surrounded by nature

Word & Image

A Year of Being With

Paintings, poetry, and reflections on entering a state of being “fully aware of the presence of another being and our shared environment” while making art. By Maisie Luo

Photo of a three people carrying a large painting through the Harvard campus

Word & Image

Maisie Luo, Earth Seer

In November 2021, Maisie Luo took a ritualistic path through Harvard Yard with her painting of the North Atlantic right whale. By Terry Tempest Williams

Dialogue

Abolitionist Theology Can Help Us Reimagine Schooling

Schooling must be abolished so that education can begin, and abolitionist theology is a starting point. By Ashley Y. Lipscomb

Collage of a young Black student's eye, school hallway with security guard, notebook
View of the mountains surrounding a monastery

On Waiting and Wanting

Reading Simone Weil, Fanny Howe, and Mark Jordan helped demonstrate how we can be transformed through the process of waiting. By Nancy Yuen-Fang Chu

Illustration of Katie Cannon's and Delores Williams' sillhuettes

Cannon, Williams, and Womanist Survival

Womanism founders Katie Cannon and Delores Williams created groundbreaking work that has led to a wide range of scholarship focused on the thriving of Black women. By Gary Dorrien

In Review

Illustration of a hand gesturing for benediction, with stigmatta cuts spouting blood to feed pernicious and slightly threatening plants and two fluffy sheep

Books

Words in the Blood

In Blood Theology: Seeing Red in Body- and God-Talk, Eugene F. Rogers, Jr. exposes the toxic allure of blood imagery in Christian art, literature, and practices. By Mark D. Jordan

Film still of charecters in Under The Banner of Heaven

Television & Film

Mormonism, the ‘Most American’ Religious Other

Mormons continue to be depicted in popular culture as victims, criminals, or disaffected. By Jaxon Washburn

These Walls Between Us book cover

Books

Building Trust through Truth-telling

A Q&A with Wendy Sanford and Mary Norman about These Walls between Us: A Memoir of Friendship across Race and Class. By Eva Seligman

Entrance to Auburn Correctional Facility, with the Copper John statue on top

Required Reading

Prison Theology

Austin Reed’s antebellum memoir The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict subverts notions of incarceration as spiritually regenerative. By Klaus C. Yoder

Collage of book covers

Syllabus

Racial Liberalism and the Ethics of Law and Justice

A selected reading list from Terrence L. Johnson’s course “Racial Liberalism and the Ethics of Law and Justice.”

Poetry

Desert Sayings

By Donovan McAbee

Perspective

Autumn/Winter issue cover

How Do We Think and Act Anew?

This is the other main theme running through the issue: the need to “treat our materials seriously” and use our creative powers to imagine—indeed, to build—what is not yet, as Lipscomb puts it, “to create a world we have not seen.” By Wendy McDowell

 

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