Essays, lectures, podcasts, & more
Essays, lectures, podcasts, & more
Scroll down for more writing, podcast, and videos, including excellent content from our friends & partners! (Or click here to explore writing for us!)
Join Mandy as she talks with Amanda about how we might “reclaim the holidays for [our] heart’s formation and the glory of God”.
Christina dives deep into the real meaning of Halloween. It’s not what you think.
The story goes like this. A
woman got brave and started a
book club. How did it turn out?
(You can read all about it here.)
Check out Jonathan
Pageau’s Symbolic World
Courses which are deeply
rooted in story telling and
the ancient traditions.
Matt’s debut middle-grade fantasy novel, Red Rex, is here! Join Mandy and Christina as they talk with Matt about the dream, the process, the plot, the characters, the illustrations — and the footnotes.
Christina Brown on the poet’s—
and our—cathedral-shaped
journey toward union with God.
Calvin and Hobbes, and the Spiderman question for all of us…does great responsibility come with great power?
Painting as a Pastime by the
great Churchill: really? Yes,
and Queen Mum loved her
Drinkypoo (recipe included)
Taylor Swift is the most popular musician since the Beatles. And Matt doesn’t understand. So he sits down with a thoughtful fan to see if she can show him the ways of the Swifties.
Everywhere she turned that
night, the ancient city revealed
a feast of light and beauty.
We all have young storytellers in our lives. How can we best encourage them?
Gianna Soderstrom
muses on the ministry of second
breakfasts -- and the power of
inviting others into our homes.
Creating alongside others for half a day is a sweet hint of
heaven. Elisa Lambert shows
us how to make it happen.
Read a review on Ted Hughes’s Poetry in the Making and pair it with a Breakfast Martini (recipe included).
Matt and Mandy interview fellow Anselm Guild member Jacoby Elliott, who is a musician, writer, and visual artist.
Mandy interviews poet, playwright, and critic Jane Scharl to discuss poetry.
Read a review on Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life and pair it with a High Tide (recipe included).
Matt has never been able to get into Frank Herbert's classic science fiction novel Dune or the film adaptations. So he brings Brian Brown and Peter Houk to the digital pub table to convince him of the merit of Dune.
Matt interviews Jody Collins about poetry and why people should like poetry and it shouldn't be so hard to do so.
Read a review on Neil Postman’s Amusing ourselves to Death and pair it with a comfort collins (recipe included).
Is there a purposeful pattern
of Creation across the Canon
through stories of multiplication?
Matt interviews short-story author KC Ireton, discussing KC's work and journey as an author.
Look to the lowly (and loud)
cicada for encouragement.
Haven't we all felt buried?
Yet a new life was coming.
It’s very likely that my heart will break over this tree in one way or another. But in God’s strange economy, being wounded means being mended in His likeness—the One for whom all of creation gladly sings.
A reflection on Reformation
poetry and its glimpse into
the death found in faith,
and the life given through
grace.
Jackson Greer ponders on why
Chesterton claims “Beauty and
the Beast” shows that to be
lovable, one must first be loved.
Mandy, Matt, and Christina discuss impressions made on them as children by different forms of art, why they made an impression on them, and how it impacts them to today.
Browse Sections:
101 | Enjoy.Understand.Embody | Centric Genius | Sing | Stories | Art & the Church | Advent
Series
Series
Browse Collections: Enjoy.Understand.Embody | Centric Genius | Sing | Stories | Art & the Church | Advent | Recommended Content | Archives
ENJOY-UNDERSTAND-EMBODY: This framework introduces the sacramental worldview that characterizes the Christian imagination. While the transcendentals - beauty, goodness and truth - can be commingled in an experience, this framework highlights how we enjoy the beautiful, seek to understand the good, and seek to participate, that is, embody the true.
Through feasting and laughter, storytelling and singing, we take delight in what God has made, and in sharing it with each other, knowing that we expand each other’s Christian imagination every time we enjoy a good and true and beautiful thing not merely for its own sake, but for that of the God who has given it to us.
Through podcasts, lectures, conferences, and church partnerships, we pursue deeper knowledge of God and His ways in light of a sacramental understanding of reality, in which heaven is present in the things of earth, and eternity in the things of time.
Through life in community, through our Arts Guild, and through both cultivating the Creation and adding to it, we seek to live like subcreators made in the image of a Creator God; answering the call to image Him, aiming to “show others a light so bright they demand to know the source of it.” (Madeleine L’Engle)
Nights full of music, poetry, food, and stories.
Series
Series
Browse Collections: Enjoy.Understand.Embody | Centric Genius | Sing | Stories | Art & the Church | Advent | Recommended Content | Archives
The modern romantic ideal of the artist is the eccentric genius; a loner, an outcast, different from everyone else. And this has some basis in reality; artists often do see the world differently than their next-door neighbors.
But for a Christian artist, even acknowledging the latter, eccentric genius can't be the goal--because he isn't exempted from the call to love his neighbor, or to be a fruitful member of the Body of Christ. So what is a Christian artist to do?
In this series, the Anselm Society (across all its podcasts, blogs, and events) will explore an alternative vision: the rooted and grounded, or centric, genius. We'll encounter story after story of artists (living and dead) whose work was rooted in strong relationships and support systems; unpack different frameworks for seeing the world and understanding our place in it; and glimpse a vision of a new normal: one where everyone has a place in God's Kingdom and where thriving as an artist and thriving as a person coexist.
Read the series introduction: “The Centric Genius: A Vision for the Flourishing Artist Christian” by Brian Brown
Watch the video above
Series
Series
Browse Collections: Enjoy.Understand.Embody | Centric Genius | Sing | Stories | Art & the Church | Advent | Recommended Content | Archives
SINGING: A compilation of Anselm events, lectures, and articles enjoying the joys of singing and what makes it so unique to the Christian faith.
A few clips to give you an idea of what’s possible.
Story INDEX ON gREAT STORIES AND WHAT IT MEANS TO TELL STORIES.
Story INDEX ON gREAT STORIES AND WHAT IT MEANS TO TELL STORIES.
Browse Collections: Enjoy.Understand.Embody | Centric Genius | Sing | Stories | Art & the Church | Advent | Recommended Content | Archives
How do we beautify the church and sanctify her artists?
Wisdom derived from John Keats and T.S. Eliot guide the 21st century artist.
How art helps us grapple with the realities of the Story in which we live.
How darkness in art can lead our children into the light.
How art aids us in experience, not just communication.
The great modern poet T.S. Eliot is a model for poets and artists in our own chaotic world. Here are just a few things we can learn from him.
Musicians Terri Moon and Greg Brown discuss Johann Sebastian Bach: both as a musical genius, and as a man centered in his faith and community.
Community & church launch the painting career of an ordinary woman.
Sorting out the writer of seedy pulp fiction and wholesome children’s stories.
John Skillen talks about the ways in which the church used to create art together...and just maybe, how it can do so again.
Taking a page from CS Lewis’s famous essay, Church Historian Blake Hartung joins the table to discuss the joys and benefits of reading ancient literature.
What do pastors and artists need to know in order to work together to inspire the church?
Father Jeromie Rand from Denver's Church of the Advent explores how learning how to love God through your craft can unleash the full potential of who you were made to be.
Series
Series
Browse Collections: Enjoy.Understand.Embody | Centric Genius | Sing | Stories | Art & the Church | Advent | Recommended Content | Archives
There are certain questions we hear a lot at the Anselm Society. We asked a few of our wonderful writers to tackle some of the most common ones.
It was once the case that the Christian imagination was shaped (as a matter of course in every church and village) through stories, poems, songs, theater, all kinds of visual art, shared celebrations, and much more. This wasn’t just because people were illiterate (as if people who can read suddenly cease to need spiritual formation outside of holing up with a book). And if the church and the arts are to come back together and provide the kind of powerful people-shaping we so desperately need, pastors and artistic creators are going to need to understand each other better.
This series, we hope, is a helpful step in that direction.
Brian Brown, Director
The Anselm Society
How art helps us grapple with the realities of the Story in which we live.
How darkness in art can lead our children into the light.
How art aids us in experience, not just communication.
Seven elements to answering a great pastoral challenge.
Thoughts for the pastor trying to foster beauty in church.
What do pastors and artists need to know in order to work together to inspire the church?
Browse Collections: Enjoy.Understand.Embody | Centric Genius | Sing | Stories | Art & the Church | Advent | Recommended Content | Archives
Advent is a time to consider, ponder, and discover anew the meaning and joys of the incarnation. Browse our collection of musings on this topic from over the years.
All earthly Christmases
disappoint us, but hiver,
the Eve of Everything,
can sweeten the bitterness
of winter with fresh hope.
Live at the Anselm Christmas Party, Matt asks whether CS Lewis should have added Father Christmas to "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." He soon gets interrupted by a couple extra-special guests.
Christ comes as the ruling King, but he also comes as the gentle Shepherd.
Does Father Christmas belong in Narnia? Brian picks a fight, we continue Lewis and Tolkien's debate, and along the way, we hit on how to portray morality in literature, and even the true meaning of Christmas gifts.
Mary is the first Christian, the first person in whom Christ dwelled. Her life and song teach us to bear Christ too.
Welcome to a special series on the season of advent. Sit in the dark, wait for the light, prepare for his coming.
The final installation of our advent series meditating on these three truths: God is light, God sent His light into the world through Christ, we are called to walk as children of the light.
This week, we await the promised shepherd through Isaiah, Hind’s Feet on High Places, Handel's Messiah, and Manchester by the Sea.
Christmas is a beautiful building block to begin to plant a flag, make a place, and let things have their proper meaning again.
Mary, the God-bearer, shows us what it looks like to receive Christ. This week we meditate on the Magnificat, the Consolation of Eve, and Thomas Tallis' Magnificat setting.
Joy explains the history of Advent, the theme of Advent, and some ways you can celebrate it, all through the lens of beautiful art.
Browse Collections: Enjoy.Understand.Embody | Centric Genius | Sing | Stories | Art & the Church | Advent | Recommended Content | Archives
Browse Collections: Enjoy.Understand.Embody | Centric Genius | Sing | Stories | Art & the Church | Advent | Recommended Content | Archives