Secular Death
Can difficult writing help us grapple with difficult loss? By Amy Hollywood
Featured
Mourning the Unknowable
A daughter comes to hold her vanishing, remote mother as myth. By Meghan Guidry
The Grace of the Lord Jesus be With All
A minister’s conversion to religious pluralism. By Brad R. Braxton
Sci-fi as a Queer Genre
Imagining new worlds opens up creative, “what if” possibilities. By Taj M. Smith
Bertha Mason is Sacred
Betrayal can teach us what is worth our trust and love. By Vanessa Zoltan
Dialogue
Growing into Faith
How the organic, homespun nurturance of the author’s Jewish faith imbued in him a sense of awe. By Robert Israel
On Habit
The habit of playing music for church turns out to be the most important healing practice during a difficult year. By Michelle C. Sanchez
From Silence to Light
A daughter’s spiritual awakening enables her to give words to the silent sufferings of her family. By Lina Feuerstein
Trump and the Pope: ‘I’ vs. ‘We’ Visions
The 2016 presidential race highlights a deep split in the American psyche between communitarian and individualistic impulses. By E. J. Dionne and Catherine Brekus
In Review
Books
Religious Rewriting, Sacred Storytelling
Mary Rakow’s This Is Why I Came is both satisfying and troubling to this Jewish reader. By Courtney Sender
Film
Nostalgia Awakens
Star Wars: The Force Awakens anticipates and addresses the concerns of a nostalgic audience. By Robert Hensley-King
Books
Church-State Confusion Persists
The Myth of American Religious Freedom, by David Sehat, reveals the long struggle in U.S. history over how to preserve or disentangle the religious and the secular. By David D. Hall
Books
Connecting Word and Flesh
An interview with with Mayra Rivera on her book Poetics of the Flesh. By Eloise Blondiau
Poetry
Two Poems
Los Muertos Vuelven
Oración
By León Felipe, translated from the Spanish by Walter Smelt
Two Poems
Default
Disclosed
By Saar Yachin, translated from the Hebrew by Alexandra Zelman-Doring
Perspective
Rethinking the Sacred
For the authors in this issue, experiences of film, literature, and sound are often inseparable from religious experience. By Ingrid Norton
