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James Vanden Bosch

James Vanden Bosch is an emeritus professor of English (Calvin University) who enjoys his retirement in Grand Rapids, Michigan; he is grateful for the time and opportunity to travel with his wife, read widely, and collect rocks and fossils. He struggles to maintain the ongoing fiction that he is a harmless grammarian.

Photo by Tina Hartung on Unsplash
Reviews

On Our Way Home From the Revolution

These essays teach the attentive reader a great deal about how difficult it is to live through revolutions, and how inadequately prepared most of us are to respond to the challenges that make up so much of our political and religious lives.
James Vanden Bosch
September 4, 2024
As We See It

Good Days for Minds and Hearts

When I was in graduate school, one of my professors had the habit of referring to that present time (the mid to late 70s) as “these late, bad times,” and many of us took up the chorus, seasoning our conversations with references to “these late, bad times.” We thought his assessment to be hyperbolic – he was old, and we were young, still preparing ourselves for the opportunities of work, career, vocation. Now that I am gradually approaching old age…
James Vanden Bosch
April 29, 2017
Used under Creative Commons license
As We See It

A Child of God Called Home Too Soon

Dale Brown died in the fall of 2014 after a bicycle crash. Most readers of Perspectives will know very little about Dale Brown, my friend and colleague whose life is the focus of a clutch of pieces in this issue of the magazine. Dale was my friend for 27 years; readers who didn’t know him may need some small bit of introduction in order to get a clearer sense of who this man was. What follows is my attempt to…
James Vanden Bosch
February 28, 2015
Uncategorized

A Bearer of Divine Revelation

James Vanden Bosch Lawrence Dorr has been writing fiction in English for more than forty years; this most recent gathering of his short stories follows three earlier collections: A Slow, Soft River (1973), The Immigrant (1976), and A Slight Momentary Affliction (1987). More than half of the fifteen stories that make up A Bearer of Divine Revelation come from the earlier collections, but their appearance here gives them new focus and new life. Taken together, these fifteen stories allow the…
James Vanden Bosch
September 1, 2013
Uncategorized

Madison Square Christian Reformed ChurchGrand Rapids, Michigan

Madison Square Christian Reformed Church, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, plays a significant role in the life of the southeast side of that city. Started in 1914 as a storefront gospel mission in a sketchy neighborhood "down by the tracks," Madison Square took a long time to move to regular congregational status; it finally happened after fifty six years, in 1970. But then, by reinvesting itself even more fully in its neighborhood, it reaped remarkable returns. In the last forty years,…
James Vanden Bosch
May 1, 2010
Uncategorized

The Road

A nameless man and his son traverse a ruined country that was once the United States, looking for food and shelter and trying to avoid the few other humans left in the wasteland of North America. By day they follow roads south, heading, they hope, for warmer weather, heading for the Atlantic coast through eastern Tennessee. By night they take refuge well off the road, risking the use of small, careful campfires to cook their meager rations and to protect…
James Vanden Bosch
October 16, 2007
Uncategorized

To Endure

During Advent I enjoyed a performance of Handel's Messiah--music for Advent and Christmas, but music also relevant to Lent and Easter. While enjoying this past year's performance, I noted again how well Handel put this oratorio together. Although I have no complaints about his abilities as a composer, it is his use of texts I find most striking as he so freely mixes the genres of the Old and New Testaments. Old Testament prophecy, poetry, Pauline analogies, praise: all are…
James Vanden Bosch
February 15, 2005