Katie Kresser

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Articles

This January: Fifty Percent Off at the Christmas Shop

Jan 13, 2025 | christianscholars.com | Katie Kresser

I have a complicated relationship with seasonal Christmas shops. I’ll bet a lot of us do. It began in the 1990s. Like most adolescents, I developed a contrarian streak when it came to the elders’ sacred cows. December rituals around Christmas Tree Shops (or their copycats) were no exception. I had a lot of reasons for disdaining these temples of holiday glitz.
Grounded: God in the Dirt

Dec 17, 2024 | christianscholars.com | Katie Kresser

Starting around the year 1400, a new kind of Nativity Scene began to grace European art – and Italian Renaissance art, particularly. Before, Nativity scenes often featured Mary holding a swaddled baby Jesus and surrounded by animals and worshippers in a stable. The new formula, however, showed the baby Jesus lying naked on the ground, his mother and father at a distance. Sometimes, the customary animals and shepherds were not present at all.
An Extended Review of The Artistic Sphere: The Arts in Neo-Calvinist Perspective (Part 2)

Nov 14, 2024 | christianscholars.com | Katie Kresser |Roger Henderson |IVP Academic

The Artistic Sphere: The Arts in Neo-Calvinist Perspective Published by IVP Academic in 432pp / $45.00 / 978-1514007976 The words of Calvinists like Kuyper on the one hand, and secular “formalists” like Greenberg on the other, can sometimes seem interchangeable.
An Extended Review of The Artistic Sphere: The Arts in Neo-Calvinist Perspective (Part 1)

Nov 13, 2024 | christianscholars.com | Katie Kresser |Roger Henderson |IVP Academic

The Artistic Sphere: The Arts in Neo-Calvinist Perspective Published by IVP Academic in 432pp / $45.00 / 978-1514007976 I was a senior in college when I first encountered Modern Art and the Death of a Culture by the Calvinist scholar Hans Rookmaaker. I was studying art history at the Courtauld Institute in London; the book was lent to me by a local youth minister.
An Extended Review of The Artistic Sphere: The Arts in Neo-Calvinist Perspective

Nov 5, 2024 | christianscholars.com | Katie Kresser |Roger Henderson |IVP Academic

The Artistic Sphere: The Arts in Neo-Calvinist Perspective Published by IVP Academic in 432pp / $45.00 / 978-1514007976 I was a senior in college when I first encountered Modern Art and the Death of a Culture by the Calvinist scholar Hans Rookmaaker. I was studying art history at the Courtauld Institute in London; the book was lent to me by a local youth minister.
Hard To Look At (The Brazen Serpent)

Oct 28, 2024 | christianscholars.com | Katie Kresser
Who are you trying to impress?

Sep 10, 2024 | christianscholars.com | Katie Kresser

I think human beings are built to want to impress someone. To please someone. To get approval. It’s there, palpably, in everyone’s eyes, if you know how to look. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this – nothing at all. It’s built into the tripartite structure of the Trinity, wherein Father and Son gaze upon each other in pleasure forever in a movement that is the Holy Spirit. We are made in the image of God. We long for the same kind of perpetually approving gaze God enjoys within Himself.
European Summer 2024: Roller Coasters, Prayers, and Platform Shoes

Aug 13, 2024 | christianscholars.com | Katie Kresser

The Hyperia roller coast is the UK’s largest and most intense, at 72 m (236 feet) in height, with three loops and a speed of more than 80 miles per hour. After several false starts (due to safety concerns and technological difficulties), it finally opened to the public on June 22, just in time for European Summer 2024, when the European market was estimated to take in a record-breaking 800 billion Euro from tourists.
Fully Seen, Fully Known

Jul 15, 2024 | christianscholars.com | Katie Kresser

Recently I walked with students among the self-portrait collection at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. Most of these portraits were glamorous and proud, but a few were melancholy, desperate, even brutal. Some were fanciful, others despairing. Almost all faced outward as if to catch the eyes of passers-by and elicit recognition, acknowledgment, and sympathy.
Scapegoating: Baby Steps at the Dead Sea

Jun 10, 2024 | christianscholars.com | Katie Kresser

Sometime in your life, you have been a scapegoat. At some point in your life, you have been at the bottom of a pecking order, or at least very near to it, and you have felt ashamed and afraid. It’s likely that this experience morally compromised you. Maybe you lied to protect yourself. Maybe you deflected attention to someone “worse” than you (i.e., you “threw them under the bus”).