Articles By: Amy Cannon

Amy graduated Summa Cum Laude from Biola University May of 2009 with a major in Philosophy and a minor in Anthropology and was awarded the Philosophy Student of the Year award by Biola’s philosophy department. Amy is also a graduate of Biola’s Torrey Honors Insitute where she was awarded Torrey’s highest award, the St. Anne’s on the Hill Award. Amy is interested in conversations between theology and literature, a sacramental view of the natural world, and poetry. She is also interested in living well a life characterized by peace and grace, if possible in a beautiful place.

Where’s Walden?

Thoreau’s glorified camping trip at Walden pond has shaped the American imagination and perspective on writers. Of course, writers holed themselves away in order to write far from the madding crowd long before Thoreau. But Thoreau embodied the rigorous independence, the resistance to the unnecessary...
June 9th, 2010 | Art & Literature, Culture, Technology | Read More

On Manners and Morality

I have a friend who rides the train once a week. Never has a train ride gone by without her having some new tale of hair-raising public impropriety: people have drunken fights, fondle one another, shout on their cell phones, and otherwise demonstrate blatant disregard for the most basic social mores....
May 19th, 2010 | Other | Read More

Though we may fall, He has risen

Christ has risen. Easter has come. We have celebrated with church and feasting and games. Those of us who fasted have finished and are happily returning to our regular meals, and those other relishes that remind us of the bounty of the lives we have been given by God. As we return to normal time, it’s...
April 12th, 2010 | The Gospel | Read More

Piped to pastures still

Lent is a time for Christians to give up what is good in order to be reminded of something better. Fasting and prayer are linked in Scripture, and it seems that fasting is a discipline which intensifies our prayers. It does so not because it makes us more holy to abstain from food, or purifies us of...
March 17th, 2010 | Protestant, Religion | Read More

Is there really room for another Austen remake? You bet your Pride and Prejudice!

Like clockwork, the BBC has come out with a television serial of Jane Austen’s classic, Emma. Weirdly, film adaptations of this particular novel seem to come in pairs: both Kate Beckinsale and Gwyneth Paltrow portrayed the eponymous heroine in 1996 — on British television and American movie...
March 10th, 2010 | Art & Literature, Film | Read More

A Killer in Captivity

The killer whale killing of this last Wednesday has received a lot press. Video footage of the trainer’s shocking death has gone viral, which hackers have used as a vehicle to spread actual viruses. This has aroused as much righteous indignation as the prurience which motivates millions of hits...
March 2nd, 2010 | Bioethics, Creation Care, Media | Read More

Lenten Memory

The Lenten season begins today, though for most this is only noteworthy as a dimly remembered justification for a lot of shenanigans in New Orleans the night before. There is much good in such preparatory seasons, however, even for those of us whose lives are not shaped by the rhythms of a church calendar....
February 16th, 2010 | Other | Read More

Our Avatars

I have not seen Avatar. I don’t plan on seeing it, either. Before the film fanatics stone me, know that I watch very few movies at all — much less movies that cost over 10 dollars to see. I don’t have much of a soft spot for SciFi, and — I have heard — though the visual...
February 8th, 2010 | Other | Read More

Was the Haitian disaster preventable?

The obvious response to this potentially offensive question is no. Haiti was hit by a massive earthquake, as straightforward an Act of Nature (or God, depending on who you ask) as one could find. The world is now rushing to relieve the overwhelming devastation this tiny country has suffered. Whether...
January 27th, 2010 | Social Justice | Read More

Delp’s Shaken Advent

Alfred Delp, a Jesuit priest executed in 1945 by the Nazi government he resisted, managed to secretly write and publish a reflection on Advent shortly before he was hanged. His thoughts on Christmas have an urgency to them, a poignancy imbued by his imprisonment and imminent death. On this, the 12th...
January 6th, 2010 | Other | Read More