2013: The Year in Writing

I so enjoyed Alan Jacob's review of his year in writing that I got thinking back over my own 2013 in terms of publishing.

Books

The second volume of my Cultural Liturgies project appeared as Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works.

I continue to be grateful for its reception, especially since it asks people to wade through two of the most obtuse French theorists, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Pierre Bourdieu.  But I enjoyed doing some proper "philosophy" in this book, though I still try to enlist it in service of the worshiping community.

Work on volume 3 is maturing and percolating, but slowly.  The working title is Embodying the Kingdom: Reforming Public Theology.  Don't ask me when it will be out. ;-)

I also published a fun little "side project" with the new Calvin College Press.  Discipleship in the Present Tense is another collection of essays, reviews, and interviews--a kind of sequel to The Devil Reads Derrida.

I've been encouraged by notes and tweets and blogs about the book.  This little publishing outfit doesn't have money for promotion, so if you can pass word along to your friends, I'm sure they'll be grateful.





Periodicals
This was the year I assumed the editorship of Comment magazine, so most of my periodical writing energies are now focused there.  Over the past year, this included the following essays (I'm not including blog posts at the Cardus Daily, some of which generated good conversation):

• I kicked off with my "manifesto" for Comment going forward, "Meet Comment Again for the First Time"
• "The Lost Art of Persuasion," my editorial for our spring 2013 issue
• "A Divided Church for the Common Good?" was my review of Ephraim Radner's important book, A Brutal Unity
• "'Naturalizing Shalom': Confessions of a Kuyperian Secularist" gets at something I remain passionate about
• "We Believe in Institutions," my editorial for our fall issue, was probably my personal favorite from the past year
• "The Good News About Power," my review of Andy Crouch's latest book, Playing God
• "Let's Talk About Your Investment Strategy" was my editorial for our latest issue on Patronage
• Finally, I wrote "Reading Culture Charitably," a little rejoinder to Eric Jacobsen's notion of "common grace liturgies"

In each issue of Comment I also write a column of sorts called "World View: An Annotated Reading of Your World."  But that's so good you have to subscribe to get it. ;-)

Also in the Cardus family, I published a Protestant appreciation of Pope Francis' encyclical, Lumen Fidei in the October issue of Convivium.

But I was also able to publish a few pieces elsewhere.  In March my essay, "Science and Culture Take Practice: Engaging Science as Culture" was published in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith.   And I published a review of David Wells' latest book in Christianity Today.

But hands-down, my favorite assignment was my article for First Things, "David Foster Wallace to the Rescue."