Writing Archives | Page 2 of 3

Through a Writer’s Eyes

August 2021

As someone who has been writing articles and books for half a century, I read the Bible differently than most people. I can’t help peeking behind the words to the human authors. I read Isaiah and marvel at his soaring prose and shining images of restored creation. I read Jeremiah and identify with the reluctant prophet’s neuroses. I read Amos and James and smile at their homespun, earthy analogies. While we do not know exactly how divine inspiration worked, it’s ...

My Untold Story

April 2021

For as long as I’ve been writing, I have wanted to produce a memoir. I’ve read great memoirs on other religious groups: Frank McCourt’s account of Irish Catholics in Angela’s Ashes, Chaim Potok’s memoir-like novels on Orthodox Judaism, Tara Westover’s bestseller Educated about fundamentalist Mormons. Yet my own tribe of evangelical/fundamentalists, hardly a fringe group, is often misunderstood and portrayed by the media in ways that seem tone deaf. Scholars of religion estimate that 90 to 100 million people in ...

A Melancholy Thanksgiving

November 2020

I’ve been working on a modern Devotions, which he wrote in 1623 during a bubonic plague outbreak. One-third of London’s residents would die, and in November Donne himself, the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, fell ill. His journal of illness captures the melancholy mood of that time, not so different from what we experience in 2020. In , the great poet and pastor searches for some shred of hope, some reason for gratitude. Ah, now I hear a different ringing ...

The Power of Love and the Love of Power (Shakespeare: Part II)

March 2020

William Shakespeare knew love, and also its complications. At the age of eighteen he married Anne Hathaway, a woman eight years his senior. Six months after the wedding, Anne gave birth to a child, which no doubt sparked local gossip. Later, he wrote love sonnets to a man—Was the playwright a closet homosexual?—and then composed 26 sonnets to a married woman known only as the Dark Lady. His plays give words to the stirrings that every romantic feels. In Love’s ...

What Makes Shakespeare Great? (Part I)

February 2020

Some years ago I read through all 38 of the plays by William Shakespeare. I chose one night per week, drank lots of coffee, and used an edition that explained his archaic words and allusions. The first few weeks it seemed like homework, but soon I found myself swept up in the plays, which were both witty and profound—and oddly up to date. His use of the English language struck me first. Computer studies reveal that Shakespeare used 17,677 different ...