Skip to main content

Filter

Featured

The Reformation According to Janet

As Janet spoke, though, it came to me again that religion mangles the Gospel sometimes. It had, for example, taught both Janet’s and Chester’s parents a harsh script, and they had acted it out; it was Janet who bore the spiritual pain of that bad teaching.
November 27, 2023
Featured Articles
Featured

Children Entering the Kingdom

One Israelite tradition, the dominant one, held that wisdom came with the experience of years and that the elders bore the responsibility of codifying and passing it on to children. ... The other tradition held that wisdom resided in children who saw the world afresh and often had a keener sense of God’s presence and purposes than their elders.
Featured
November 13, 2023

A Reformed Theological Case for Same-Sex Marriage

Too often the debate over same-sex marriage is reduced to trying to sidestep a few tangential passages or throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks. Instead, we need a comprehensive Reformed theology of marriage that honors the full arc of Scripture from creation to eschaton.
Featured
November 6, 2023

Look Where She Comes From

I don’t have a career. Most of my jobs have included me having to run the checkout, and sweeping and mopping the floor at the end of the night. My husband doesn’t have a college education or a career. He’s what is referred to as a cement dweller. He goes to a factory and spends his days standing on a cement floor bending and twisting metal all day. We don’t own a large house—up until a year earlier, we were…
CultureFeatured
October 30, 2023

Digging In and Bailing Out: Religion, Politics, and the Rise of the Nones: Part Three

And yet, as the old saying goes, “Hope is a choice.” What tomorrow, next year, decade, or century might look like, we do not know. The current trends point toward more animosity and broader culture wars. But I am confident that we have the capacity to make choices that produce better outcomes than we see today.
ChurchFeatured
October 23, 2023

Digging In and Bailing Out: Religion, Politics, and the Rise of the Nones: Part Two

To understand the rise of the Nones, it is necessary to consider the broader cultural impact of the rise of the Religious Right in producing a broad backlash, but it is equally important to explore how these processes operate at a congregational level in which people who have worshiped together for generations find themselves having to make the difficult choice of leaving a congregation that has been an important part of their and their family’s identity.
ChurchFeatured
October 16, 2023

Digging In and Bailing Out: Religion, Politics, and the Rise of the Nones: Part One

While conservative Christians are circling the wagons calling for a commitment to core values and practices that map well to key Republican priorities, politically moderate and liberal Christians are rushing to find the exits. The result is a growing divide between more ideologically pure conservative Christian communities on one side and a more secular, more liberal group on the other, many of whom do not identify with any religious tradition. Having explored these trends, sociologists and other scholars have concluded…
EssayFeatured
October 9, 2023

The Mourner’s Bench

Cancer doesn’t care who or what you are. Speak all your evidence, demand all your rights and entitlements, share your unfulfilled dreams. And be prepared for silence. Cancer isn’t listening.

Latest from the Blog

Daily blog by our regular bloggers & guest contributors.

  • Vince in the Hole
    My idea of patiently waiting in hope is just missing a green light and having to wait the entire 75 seconds for it to turn green again.
    December 3, 2023 Duane Kelderman
  • Holiday Gift Guide for a Fraught 2023
    Once again, we face the need to whump up holiday cheer despite a world of conflict and trouble, ranging from...
    December 2, 2023 Debra Rienstra
  • Mysteries
    The church was packed. Mom would have liked that. And all five “first ladies” were in attendance–she would have liked...
    December 1, 2023 James C. Schaap
  • Heron brain
    The conversation is at the same time progressive and atavistic – which is amazing to me.
    November 30, 2023 Tim Van Deelen
  • It’s Own Kind of Wild Geese
    Hopefully this blog serves for you as its own kind of wild geese, calling our attention to those things we might otherwise neglect.
    November 30, 2023 Laura de Jong
  • A Light in the Cavern of Idols
    I’m grateful to you, gentle readers, for giving me the chance to think out loud—I hope on matters that matter.
    November 29, 2023 James Bratt
  • To Read is to Love
    What a way to love one’s neighbor by engaging what they have written.
    November 29, 2023 Jennifer L. Holberg
  • Finding Freedom in Curiosity and the Written Word
    The work we’re doing here at the Reformed Journal is trying to create a community that can ask questions and encourage curiosity.
    November 28, 2023 Allison Vander Broek

Poetry

Poetry
November 28, 2023

Weight (Metaphysicals XI)

How can we stomp it out? all the rude crude smashed glass & heartache ...
PoetryUncategorized
November 21, 2023

Peter Remembers

It is the nets I remember most, even after all these years --
Poetry
November 14, 2023

Did it Hurt

did it hurt when tongues of fire landed on their heads ...
Poetry
November 7, 2023

Anti-Hero

Blood streaks splatter across moonbeams like a pearl-string snatched from a virgin's neck ...
Poetry
October 31, 2023

Pride Be Not Death (Metaphysicals X)

Pride be not death for as I've stretched to reach out from these brambles to cut away the vines about my ankles ...
Poetry
October 10, 2023

Desert Eyes

My aunt told me I needed desert eyes to see the beauty in a cactus spike,

Latest Podcasts

Podcast
December 3, 2023

“Testimony” by James C. Schaap

On the second episode of the holiday special by James C. Schaap, author and retired English professor, James shares “Testimony.” Today, an arrogant artist who proudly calls himself elitist agrees to narrate the simple holiday program at his church, and is startled to find himself on his knees on Christmas Eve.
Podcast
November 26, 2023

“Forgetting Jesus” by James C. Schaap

This is the first episode of the holiday special by James C. Schaap, author and retired English professor. Today, an eighth grader, fed up with smarmy Sunday School Christmas programs, races home to find a baby Jesus doll, only to discover, slowly, something she had never pondered about the gift in the manger.
Podcast
November 7, 2023

“Anti-Hero” by Nathaniel A. Schmidt

In this episode of the poetry edition, Rose Postma interviews Nathaniel Schmidt about his poem “Anti-Hero,” based on Matthew 26:52. Nathaniel A. Schmidt is an ordained minister in the Christian Reformed Church of North America and serves as a hospice and hospital chaplain. He holds degrees from Calvin Theological Seminary, Calvin University, and The University of Illinois, Springfield. His newest poetry collection, Transfiguring, is out from Whippenstock.
Podcast
October 10, 2023

“Desert Eyes” by Mary Grace Mangano

In this episode of the poetry edition, Rose Postma interviews Mary Grace Mangano about her poem “Desert Eyes.” Mary Grace has worked as a middle and high school English teacher in several major cities and has published freelance and creative writing. She received her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of St. Thomas in Houston as an inaugural Gioia Family Fellowship recipient and as a member of the first cohort to graduate from the program. Currently, she is an…
Podcast
October 2, 2023

“Sarah, Long Suffering” by Patricia L. Hamilton

In this episode of the Reformed Journal Podcast, Rose Postma interviews Patricia L. Hamilton about her poem “Sarah, Long Suffering.” Patricia is a professor of English at Union University and the author of The Distance to Nightfall. She won the Rash Award in Poetry in 2015 and 2017 and has received three Pushcart nominations.
Podcast
September 12, 2023

“Butterfly” by Harold J. Recinos

In this episode of the poetry edition, Rose Postma interviews Rev. Dr. Harold J. Recinos about his poem “Butterfly.” Harold is professor of church and society at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. A cultural anthropologist, he specializes in work and ethnographic writing dealing with undocumented Central American migrants and the Salvadoran diaspora. He has published numerous articles, chapters in collections, and written major works in theology and culture, including ten collections of poetry. His most recent…