Nathaniel Peters

The New York Times has a funny article not on a devotional practice, but on the consequences of a devotional practice. As we all know, devout Muslims pray five times a day in the direction of Mecca as one of the five pillars of their faith. The news regularly runs footage of crowds kneeling in . . . . Continue Reading »

Last year a good friend introduced me to a song that has become my new favorite Christmas carol. It’s also the shortest one I’ve ever heard, at just over a minute long. According to Wikipedia , “Adam Lay Ybounden” is a 15th century song attributed to an anonymous wandering . . . . Continue Reading »

The New York Times today has an interesting article , which talks about a prayer service held late at night for the express purpose of spiritual warfare. The students, taxicab drivers, homemakers and entrepreneurs, all Christians, mostly from French-speaking Africa, attend a midnight service four . . . . Continue Reading »

Tucked away down the street from the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia sits an unassuming brown Romanesque church. This church is the parish of St. Clement’s, a small community of Anglo-Catholics who are dedicated to the beauty and fullness of the Western liturgy, all with the help of a . . . . Continue Reading »

After further discussion with readers, including the original one to whom I responded, I would like to clarify my earlier remarks about The Golden Compass . Books of substance have an “atmosphere,” as C.S. Lewis put it, along which the text runs, an atmosphere that permeates the text . . . . Continue Reading »

A reader of my review of The Golden Compass found it “baffling.” I had written that “neither the film nor the book is likely to make any converts to atheism. Just as most children walked away from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with religious convictions unchanged, so will . . . . Continue Reading »

The book version of The Golden Compass begins with a bang. The movie version with a lecture.The film opens with the camera panning across a sea of computer-generated galaxies, and a narrative voice tells us of the underpinnings of Philip Pullman’s world. We learn that many universes lie . . . . Continue Reading »

In the November issue of First Things, Joseph Bottum wrote, “The weakest set of candidates in living memory has taken the field, and we still have more than a year left of watching these people, lumbering and blumbering toward the goal line.”I thought it wrong at the time, for the dark . . . . Continue Reading »

This is a story¯a creation myth from the Tofa: In the very beginning there were no people, there was nothing at all.There was only the first duck, she was flying along.Having settled down for the night, the duck laid an egg.Then, her egg broke.The liquid of her egg poured out and formed a . . . . Continue Reading »

Angry protestors line the sidewalk of a San Francisco street. Behind barricades and a line of policemen, they vent their rage at a group of young Christians in town for a rally. Cries of “Christian fascist” fly across the road, and on the other side, a teenager leads her group in a prayer: . . . . Continue Reading »