The Christian Relic Nobody Wants to Talk About

The people of Calcata continued to parade through the streets with the prepuce every January 1 almost until Return of the Jedi hit theaters.

Holy Relics: The Choir Robe

The choir robe is a symbol of conformity, representative of an individual voice joining a crowd of voices, subsumed.

Holy Relics: The Campfire

Why go out into the wilderness if not to meet God-The-Consuming-Fire, hands outstretched to toast marshmallows over His light and warmth?

Holy Relics: The Welcome Card

The welcome card is not just a way to welcome newcomers. It becomes a possible means of grace.

Holy Relics: The Missionary Map

When will she grow, when will it be her time to go, when will all of those other verses she memorizes on Wednesday nights to get fake plastic jewels in her fake plastic AWANA crowns apply to her?

Holy Relics: The Full Armor of God (Playset)

Holy Relics: A Christmas Eve Candle

Centuries of waiting and longing in the time before and after the life of Christ give the season its shape.

Holy Relics: A Crockpot

Lined with residual food stains, the ringed basin of a crockpot might contain clues about its age.

Holy Relics: A Rocking Chair

But to look at a newborn is also to catch sight of the eternal nascence of the kingdom of God.

Holy Relics: The Acoustic Guitar

As the organ suits a stone church with stained glass windows, the guitar suits aluminum sheet siding, coffee in Styrofoam cups, and PowerPoint slide decks.

Holy Relics: The Hymnal, Part 2

God’s happiness for people is seriously complicated, what with the bone-deep sorrow and the crying and everything.

Holy Relics: The Hymnal, Part 1

The Church’s songs convey its beliefs about God, but they also convey its beliefs about God’s world.

Holy Relics: The TV Guardian

Does obstructing a premature thought of sex require us to forego an unsullied idea of hugs?

Holy Relics: A Church Van

Reliving the adventures of a ten-hour-long ride in the ol’ church van.

Holy Relics: The Church Bulletin

What’s outside this ongoing act of community can be downright horrifying, although that isn’t to say that what’s within the community can’t be.

Holy Relics: A Focus on the Family Movie Review

John is injected with a drug that renders him unconscious.

A small group of twentysomethings seems to be high.

We see the hole in his flesh, the blood-streaked face

and more blood pooling on the ground.

Charles smokes a cigar.