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The night the die was cast
Spring/Summer 2019
Bible camp was an important part of my early spiritual formation. I began attending Covenant Harbor on Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, when I was in fifth grade, attending for a week each summer through the tenth grade. I also recall winter Hi-League retreats at the Harbor. It was familiar space, an extension of my church home. While in high school, I worked one summer on the staff of the camp and years later served on its board.
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The poetics of faith
Spring/Summer 2017
“Religion is the supreme experience of the human spirit, and that experience finds its most perfect literary expression in poetry,” wrote Washington Gladden, the Congregational theologian whose life spanned the 19th and 20th centuries. I am among those interested in poetry that speaks to the intersection of our lives with the mystery and transcendence of God.
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Plausible musings on muted memories
Fall/Winter 2016
I have only faint recollections of my Grandpa Anderson, as he died in 1943 when I was only four. I can’t say I really knew him, though he would not have said the same of me. He was around when I was born and present at the Bethesda Covenant Church the day I was baptized. He no doubt cradled me in his arms and welcomed me in his own way as his third grandchild. He was a first-hand observer of my earliest years but I have only dim remembrances of being in his presence.
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Tributaries of faith
Spring/Summer 2016
A theme that weaves its unambiguous way throughout any story of those Swedish Pietists that emigrated from Sweden to America is the role of Christian faith in their lives. In my own family it is impossible to rightly understand my grandparents, John and Frida (Carlson) Anderson and Charles and Hilma (Lindstrom) Peterson, who immigrated to Rockford, Illinois in the late 1800s, apart from this steadying belief that animated their lives. It was a faith nourished by two important tributaries.
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The Mystery of Christ, According to Sallman
Epiphany 2010
Our commitment to honor Sallman and his religious art is not driven by a desire to suggest that his work rivals that of, say, Raphael or Rembrandt, although we do want him to be taken seriously. Rather we pay tribute to his memory and work because his art has touched the lives of countless people in America and throughout the world.
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Jack Lundbom’s Magnum Opus
Summer 2006
At the end of last year Doubleday published the final volume, Jeremiah 37-52, of Dr. Jack R. Lundbom’s magisterial three volume commentary on the Book of Jeremiah. Volume one, Jeremiah 1-20, came out in 1999 and volume two, Jeremiah 21-36, was published in early 2004. The three books (more than 2200 pages in all) are a part of the prestigious Anchor Bible Commentary Series edited by the late William Foxwell Albright and David Noel Freedman. They represent a monumental achievement in biblical scholarship by one of the sons of the Covenant Church.
