The Conference on Christianity & Literature

Summer 2007, Volume 56
Number 4

Articles

Carnival in the "Temple": Flannery O'Connor's Dialogic Parable of Artistic Vocation
Denise T. Askin

Tennyson's Idylls of the King and Anglican Authority
Noelle Bowles

"Take, Eat": Food Imagery, the Nurturing Ethic, and Christian Identity in
The Wide, Wide World, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Linda Naranjo-Huebl

Peter Wimsey and Precious Ramotswe: Castaway Detectives and Companionate Marriage
Virginia LaGrand and Craig E. Mattson

Special Features

Paganism and Literature
Alan Jacobs
Principle, Narrative, Commandment
Alan Jacobs

Book Reviews

Armando Maggi, In the Company of Demons: Unnatural Beings, Love, and Identity in the Italian Renaissance
Jeffrey Burton Russell

Eleanor Cook, Enigmas and Riddles in Literature
Curtis Gruenler

Joe B. Fulton, The Reverend Mark Twain: Theological Burlesque, Form, and Content
Michael J. Kiskis

Jan Nordby Gretlund and Karl-Heinz Westarp, eds., Flannery O'Connor's Radical Reality
Jill Peláez Baumgaertner

James W. Coleman, Faithful Vision: Treatments of the Sacred, Spiritual, and Supernatural in Twentieth-Century African American Fiction
Tiffany Eberle Kriner

Matthew Dickerson and David O'Hara, From Homer to Harry Potter: A Handbook on Myth and Fantasy
Gregory Hartley

Jennifer L. Holberg, ed., Shouts and Whispers: Twenty-One Writers Speak about Their Writing and Their Faith
Luci Shaw, What the Light Was Like
Jessica L. Raymond

Bret Lott, ed., The Best Christian Short Stories
C. D. Albin

Poetry

Feast of the Epiphany
January Letter to Scooter
Julia Spicher Kasdorf

A Year After the Bushfire
Peter Stiles

The Ballad of Cain
Raymond Cavanaugh

The Desert
Kirsten Jacob

 

Questions to Tammy Ditmore (tammy.ditmore@pepperdine.edu)

In the Latest Issue of Christianity & Literature:


Skylight

Joseph A. Chelius

For hours under a
  freezing hole
we huddled in
  thin jackets,
shuffled our
  numbed feet
to Yes and
  early Genesis tunes
on the paint-spattered
  CD player
my brother had
  set down
on a brown milk crate.
In the clutter of tools
  and hoagie wrappers,
bottles of Yuengling
  Lite chilling
in the spare
  refrigerator by the
  pool table,
we traded quips,
 talked point spreads--
spoke the language
  that passes
for affection among
  unshaven men
at sport or on the job
  on Saturday
  afternoons--
but then came the
  lofty play of hands
as we helped to ease
  the big skylight
  in place.
How solemn we grew,
how hushed in our
  concentration:
the four of us with
  our palms extended
in silent communion,
  reaching up
to take it in--a chore
  transformed
into sacred work;
the forbearance of
  the fingers--
gentle wayfarers,
little plodders
  in the dark,
resting, resuming,
grappling above
  our heads,
probing for signs with
  their common touch.

    Summer 2008