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Sport and Religion

Ultimately, sport opens windows to transcendence. One can hardly watch Usain Bolt run the 100 meters, or Simone Biles do a floor exercises, or Caitlin Clark sink a three-pointer, or witness Jim Redmond supporting his injured son Derek across the finish line without recognizing that God is at work in an extraordinary way.
April 15, 2024
Featured Articles
Featured

From Convict to Mentor: Changing the Prison Culture from Within

Having long since given up on God and Christianity when I entered the program, I had no appreciation of its religious aspects. However, starting each class with a devotional and prayer became the building blocks upon which I started to form a renewed relationship with Christ.
Featured
April 1, 2024

Christ’s Followers Are Not Culture Warriors

Lent and Easter remind me to have hope. Though the Crusades did horrible damage to people and to the name of Christ, they came to an end. Likewise, this present madness embarked on by culture warriors in America will end too. Just as God reminded Elijah that not all Israel bowed its knee to Baal, so also not all Christians in America embrace destructive, vigilante power. Some deny themselves, take up their crosses daily, follow Christ, and lay down their…
Mark Stephenson 27
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Featured
March 25, 2024

My Mother is in Hospice Care

Loss of memory can sometimes be a gift. I know it isn’t always, and I can imagine that there are plenty of counter examples, but as I sit with my mom and experience (for the ten-millionth time in my life) her love for me, I realize that there can be a kind of grace in not remembering a few things. It’s not denial; it’s choosing to remember her life as good. My mom wants to leave this world a grateful…
Doug Brouwer
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Featured
March 18, 2024

Of Giants and Waves

He always told me that the most important thing in working in a hot fight is to recognize that everybody wants to simplify the issues so you have clear reasons for killing each other (spiritually, of course, in most church conflicts). He said that the most important thing one can do is to “complexify things.”
Laura de Jong
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Featured
March 11, 2024

Standing on the Word

Today, my ESV Bible is all marked up and highlighted, with copious marginalia. It is full of stars, exclamation points, hearts, WOWs and “thank yous.” Someone looking through it might think that my faith is superficial, that it lacks nuance and complexity. But I know the world of struggle that lay beneath each heart, each star, each exclamation point.
Jessamyn Rains
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March 4, 2024

Footnotes to Fiction: Confessions of a Post-Pandemic Wannabe Novelist.

That I’d written a novel surprised people because I have a Ph.D. in American Culture Studies and for many years taught college courses and wrote nonfiction books about film and media. My day job kept me busy enough. (Maybe that’s why I lost sleep over whether to kill off my erudite professor character.) But I have this story I’ve always wanted to tell, and started carving out time to do some research, make notes, and organize material until I could…
William D. Romanowski
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Featured
February 26, 2024

Pentecost Sunday:  The Kingdom, Scripture, and Same Sex Marriage

The Bible is a historical book, thus requiring historical tools of analysis, the most basic of which is establishing the context for what is going on in the text. The Bible is also a literary book, thus requiring literary tools of analysis, like asking the genre of a text: a chronicle is not a poem, nor a first-person account, nor a letter of a specific church, nor an apocalypse. There is, in fact, no such thing as “quoting Scripture” with…
Ronald Wells
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Latest from the Blog

Daily blog by our regular bloggers & guest contributors.

  • Eye-white and froth
    “Read this,” she said. So I did. She’s our professional writer and her critiques of my offerings for my biweekly...
    April 18, 2024 Tim Van Deelen
  • The Sordid and the Sacred
    The nursing home was one of those 1960s style places with lots of tiny rooms, each of which housed two people. Each room also shared a mini-bathroom with the room next door.
    April 17, 2024 David Landegent
  • Hindu Retirement
    Understanding retirement as a new phase of life offering opportunities to “deepen our spiritual practice” is a healthy approach to take.
    April 16, 2024 John Hubers
  • What an Ex-Con Music Star Taught Me About Being a Good Pastor
    We have a family ritual of gathering around the television on Sunday nights to watch the hit show “America Idol.”...
    April 15, 2024 Brian Keepers
  • I am Right, and I have always been that way
    If I acknowledge that I have changed, it suggests that in fact I might continue to change.
    April 14, 2024 Katie Van Zanen
  • Filled-Full
    The thing that I find myself asking during this season is, “What am I being filled with?” During times of rough waters we get bogged down with lots of things, including lots of big feelings.
    April 13, 2024 Katy Sundararajan
  • Growing the Game
    “I don’t like to watch women’s basketball. They’re just too cocky.” Too cocky? Really? This, I had to see.
    April 12, 2024 Heidi S. De Jonge
  • City on a Hill
    Amiens was the greatest, but certainly not the only cathedral we visited during our two month summer sojourn in Europe
    April 11, 2024 Henry de Jong

Poetry

Poetry
April 16, 2024

Parable of the Lost

quick breath, heart beat clock strike: each metronome tick-tocks past paths that arch like R's bowl, back by another route ...
Bethany Besteman 1
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Poetry
April 9, 2024

A Recovered Alcoholic-Addict Talks of Grace

The cancer shot through Earl like a rainbow and left a crook in his arm, just right to lift up the grandchild he'd never held before.
LC Guiterrez 0
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Poetry
April 2, 2024

How to Reconcile with a Brother

I could build him a barn, a big one, as wide as the sky, red, to show my love and to confess I share the same blood ...
Jo Taylor 1
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Poetry
March 26, 2024

Release (Metaphysicals XV)

If when the end has ended & all that's been running down begins to rewind until each beginning has once more begun ...
D.S. Martin
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Poetry
March 26, 2024

Be Killing Sin

I was 7 and riding the school bus home to the trailer we lived in back then ...
Cody Adams
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Poetry
March 19, 2024

A Shout

From the falling form of an intricate vase, water was freed ...
Scott Schuleit
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Latest Podcasts

Podcast
April 16, 2024

“Parable of the Lost” by Bethany Besteman

In this episode of the poetry edition, Rose Postma interviews Bethany Besteman about her poem “Parable of the Lost.” Bethany works as a worship coordinator and a church administrator for Silver Spring CRC in Maryland. She's also the intake editor for Reformed Worship.
Rose Postma 0
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Podcast
April 9, 2024

“A Recovered Alcoholic-Addict Talks of Grace” by LC Gutierrez

In this episode of the poetry edition, Rose Postma interviews LC Gutierrez about his poem “A Recovered Alcoholic-Addict Talks of Grace.” LC is a product of many places in the South and the Caribbean, as well as writing and comparative literature programs at Louisiana State and Tulane University. An erstwhile academic, he now writes, teaches and plays trombone in Madrid, Spain. His work is published or forthcoming in Notre Dame Review, Dunes Review, Rougarou, Apricity, and other wonderful journals.
Rose Postma 0
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Podcast
April 2, 2024

“How to Reconcile with a Brother” by Jo Taylor

In this episode of the poetry edition, Rose Postma interviews Jo Taylor about her poem, “How to Reconcile with a Brother.” Jo is a retired, 35-year English teacher from Georgia. Her favorite genre to teach high school students was poetry, and today she dedicates more time to writing it, her major themes focused on family, place, and faith. She says she writes to give testimony to the past and to her heritage. She has been published in several journals, both on-line…
Rose Postma 0
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Podcast
March 26, 2024

“Be Killing Sin” by Cody Adams

In this episode of the poetry edition, Rose Postma interviews Cody Adams on his poem “Be Killing Sin.” Cody is an English teacher from Buffalo, NY. His poetry has appeared in Ekstasis Magazine, Heart of Flesh, Cacti Fur, among others. He received the 2016 Clarence Amann award for his short story Unstuck. He also serves as a Board Member for Forefront Festival.
Rose Postma
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Podcast
March 5, 2024

“Above the Tree Line” by Lynn Domina

In this episode of the Poetry Edition of the Reformed Journal Podcast, Rose Postma interviews Lynn Domina about her poem “Above the Tree Line.” Lynn is the author of 3 collections of poetry and a professor at Northern Michigan University. Her articles have appeared in Studies in American Indian Literature, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, and other academic journals and edited collections. She lives with her family in Marquette, on the beautiful shores of Lake Superior.
Rose Postma
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Podcast
February 27, 2024

Love Like an Ocean (Metaphysicals XIV) by DS Martin

In this episode of the poetry edition, Rose Postma interviews DS Martin about his poem Love Like an Ocean (Metaphysicals XIV) inspired by one of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets. Don is a widely published poet and the Poet-in-Residence at McMaster Divinity College. He's also a series editor for the Poiema Poetry Series. You can listen to other poems in this series in The Reformed Journal Podcast. You can also read the other poems by DS Martin on our website.
Rose Postma
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