This Week in the Reformed Journal: Reviews, Colors, and More
We published several reviews this week. It started last Saturday when Deb Rienstra reviewed the film The Tragedy of Macbeth, which got my attention because it’s directed by one of the Coen brothers and stars Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand. Then on Monday Jon Hiskes reviewed the album The Horses and the Hounds and on Thursday Jared Ayers reviewed Kevin Adams’s new book Living Under Water. Those reviews were all on our blog. We added a review of Smashing the Liquor Machine on Around the Web and a review by Helen Luhrs of the novel Little Faith. I don’t blame you if you had trouble keeping up. I did too!!!
Little Faith: A Novel — reformedjournal.com This book is a worthwhile read, but don’t expect it to erase your own doubts about faith.
Color played a prominent role in the two poems we published this week by Stella Nesanovich. I thought one poem was blue and the other was red. What insight! There's more. Bright guy that I am, I looked at the name Stella Nesanovich and thought, “That doesn’t sound Dutch.” So I read her bio and learned she’s from Lake Charles, Louisiana, which then started a song from The Band playing in my head. Sorry, that’s just the way my weird brain works. (Anyone else hear that song?) I am amazed at how our poetry editor Rose Postma finds contributions for us from far and wide and I deeply appreciated Ms. Nesanovich’s evocative poems.
Blue Light — reformedjournal.com The color of deep ice, the blue frozen in crevasses, a hue like none other.
The Bright Field — reformedjournal.com That moment when, in the midst of wreckage and tears, you see a scarlet cardinal across the way ...
Scott Hoezee’s essay “A Curious Omission,” provided historical background on the sexuality report which will play a big role in the next CRC Synod. Scott drew on an important essay by Lew Smedes that appeared in the print version of this magazine 23 years ago. To get a measure of how much passion and thought is going on in the CRC around this topic, scroll through the responses to Scott—they may be longer than the original piece!
A Curious Omission — reformedjournal.com It is not fully clear to me why the 2022 committee did not engage the Smedes analogy nor why they characterized the 1980 report as hard and rigid and legalistic when in fact that report finally argued against being hard and rigid and above all legalistic in matters of marriage, divorce, and remarriage. The curious omission of this engagement is noteworthy and is something deserving of reflection by all who will have anything to do with the reception of this significant synodical report. Could the committee’s selectivity in dealing with the church’s stance on divorce and remarriage stem from a desire to not let anything interfere with a set of foregone conclusions? And are there other areas of the Human Sexuality report that reflect a simila
I always find myself enjoying the contributions Jon Pott makes to our efforts. You probably know he was the long time editor of The Reformed Journal and editor-in-chief at Eerdmans. This reflection about the life of his mother was very moving.
In Her Time — blog.reformedjournal.com Eighteen years ago this week, on a brilliant morning after a night snowstorm, we laid our ninety-three-year-old mother to rest.
It has been a full week.
Happy Reading!
Jeff Munroe
Editor