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Debra Rienstra

I am a writer and literature professor, teaching early British literature and creative writing at Calvin University, where I have been on the faculty since 1996. Born and bred in the Reformed tradition, I’ve been unable to resist writing four books about theological topics: beware the writer doing theology without a license. Besides the books, I’ve written well over two hundred essays for The Twelve as well as numerous articles, poems, and reviews in popular and scholarly contexts. I have a B.A. from the University of Michigan (Go Blue!) and a M.A. and Ph.D. from Rutgers. I am married to Rev. Ron Rienstra, and together we have three grown children. Besides reading and writing, I love classical music, science fiction, fussing in the yard, hiking, and teaching myself useful skills like plant identification and—maybe someday—drywall repair.

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Lost: Tramping through the Jungle toward the Glowy Light

Anthologies of world literature aimed at the college textbook market tend to include most or all of Dante's Inferno, and only a few, if any, cantos from Purgatorio or Paradiso. Perhaps the reasoning behind this is that undergraduates find sin altogether fascinating and redemption rather dull. Maybe we all do. Typical primetime TV offerings would seem to confirm this point. The titillation, the murders, the explosions--why tune in unless something violent or scandalous is happening? The producers of the justconcluded…
October 1, 2010
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New (and Dull?) Apologetics

Debra Rienstra Two doctrinal sermons every Sunday, hymns thick with theological import, Bible class at school, and catechism class every Wednesday. That was my religious upbringing, heavy with Bible knowledge and theological terminology. This appealed to my bookish nature, and for the most part I lapped it right up. The part I hated was youth group, with its strained urgings toward "sharing" followed by activities that we cynically referred to as "forced fun." I would be hard-pressed to find a…
October 16, 2008
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Get Thee Behind Me, Fat

NOVEMBER 2007: AS WE SEE IT "Thou shalt place outside thy door a vat of fat. And this shalt be a sign unto the angel of heart disease to pass over thy house. Purge thy dwelling of trans and saturated fats (polyunsaturated is OK in smallish amounts) and purify thy house and all that is therein. Set outside thy dwelling, then, the vat of fat to signify thy purity, so that thou mayest be holy and live long in the…
November 15, 2007
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Always Beginners

It is only human nature to grip too tightly and compress the certainties into too-limited, too-simple formulations. Part of us wants truth to come in portable sizes. In trying to explain who Jesus is, for example, Christians can manage to reduce him to the good moral teacher in sandals, the wise founder of a social justice movement, a model CEO, their personal life consultant, the knight who defends their version of the truth, or even--if the worst contemporary worship songs…
November 16, 2005