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Nov 1, 2024 | 
religiondispatches.org | Robert Repino
If the polls are right, then the majority of Christian voters will cast their lot with Donald Trump in 2024. For the thirdelection in a row.
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Aug 26, 2024 | 
reactormag.com | Robert Repino
Empathy has become something of a watchword in recent years, finding its way into policy discourse, HR communications, philanthropic endeavors, and (sigh) social media. Thanks to our endless political season, our increasingly connected world, and our growing collective awareness of systemic injustices, there is a greater need to step out of our own limited experiences and see the world from a different perspective.
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Aug 19, 2024 | 
reactormag.com | Robert Repino
In my younger days, when I was far more eager to pick a fight have a discussion with friends and acquaintances who held beliefs different from my own, I formulated what I thought was a foolproof way of countering the claim that a person’s life can have no meaning without the existence of a god. For several reasons, the accusation that a godless life is somehow less fulfilling, less authentic, less moral, and less meaningful struck a nerve with me. It felt like a cheap shot.
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Aug 13, 2024 | 
reactormag.com | Robert Repino
The evolving definition of the world cool has made it one of the most popular and most subjective slang terms in the English language. At this point, no standard dictionary definition can adequately cover what cool means. Attempts to summarize the possible variations always end with a vague “etc.”. Even the most recent Word of the Year featured a new spin on it.
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Jul 26, 2024 | 
baltimoresun.com | Robert Repino
When faced with a crisis, people can be tempted to believe that past generations had an easier set of choices between good or bad, right or wrong. This tendency leads some people - in the case of the 2016 election, too many people - to assume that all choices inevitably lead in the same direction. In other words, nothing we do really matters. This phenomenon reminds me of a passage in a memoir by the late Christopher Hitchens, in which he describes his father's service in World War II.
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Mar 12, 2024 | 
religiondispatches.org | Robert Repino
In a strange way, I envy the people who were raised as evangelical Christians in the 1980s and 1990s, because many of them got to experience This Present Darkness in a way I never could. For the uninitiated, This Present Darkness is a horror novel by Frank Peretti published in 1986, at the height of the Satanic Panic, whose paranoid themes are depressingly familiar almost 40 years later.
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Jan 23, 2024 | 
reactormag.com | Robert Repino |Chris Lough |Jonathan Thornton |Keith DeCandido
I am both proud and slightly horrified to say that my first published novel took over a year to write, and three long years to rewrite. And that’s not counting the failed book projects that preceded it over the previous fifteen years. Even after it managed to find a publisher, the novel was simply too long, with too many characters, too many plot twists, too much exposition. Oh, and the editor who acquired it asked me to cut over 100 pages.
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Jan 22, 2024 | 
religiondispatches.org | Robert Repino
It’s a story that can inspire even the most cynical among us. A person endures some difficult trial, such as an illness, injury, or other calamity. At their lowest point, they call to the divine. And through the darkness they discern a voice, either speaking directly or providing signs for where to go next. Once the ordeal has passed, the person is changed forever, with a newfound faith—or a restored one. A variation of this story can be found everywhere. Parents share it with children.
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Jan 22, 2024 | 
tor.com | Robert Repino
I am both proud and slightly horrified to say that my first published novel took over a year to write, and three long years to rewrite. And that’s not counting the failed book projects that preceded it over the previous fifteen years. Even after it managed to find a publisher, the novel was simply too long, with too many characters, too many plot twists, too much exposition. Oh, and the editor who acquired it asked me to cut over 100 pages.
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Jan 25, 2023 | 
onlysky.media | Robert Repino
Reading Time: 7 minutesIn my younger days, when I was far more eager to pick a fight have a discussion with friends and acquaintances who held beliefs different from my own, I formulated what I thought was a foolproof way of countering the claim that a person’s life can have no meaning without the existence of a god or a set of gods. For several reasons, the accusation that a godless life is somehow less fulfilling, less authentic, less moral, and less meaningful struck a nerve with me.
