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.

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

Intentional Ambiguity: Telling it Slant

In the recent inaugural episode of Barak Wright’s arts and culture podcast, The Sandbox Monthly, Ken Myers talked about the dearth of genuine speech on the radio. Real conversation is full of starts and stops, hesitations, and the kind of awkwardness not found in the canned speech of radio personalities,...
December 7th, 2009 | Art & Literature, Logic & Rhetoric, The Gospel | Read More

A Blog of One’s Own

Virginia Woolf’s seminal “A Room of One’s Own” argues that women have not produced great literature historically because of culturally-enforced poverty. Historically, women have not had independent power or prestige or wealth, and so could not, as a rule, write great works. Though...
December 4th, 2009 | Art & Literature, Blogging, Culture, History | Read More

I don’t…or do I?

“Happily unmarried” is the new catchphrase for couples who have long term monogamous relationships, often with children, but without tying the knot. This makes sense when a Christian concept of marriage no longer has any real cultural currency, and when even the social mores held over...
November 19th, 2009 | Culture, Family Issues | Read More