Karen E. Park is an associate professor of Theology and Religious Studies at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wis. Her interests include Christian history and American Catholic history, with particular attention to the uses and meanings of sacred space and visual culture.
Posts By This Author
Confronting Christian Anti-Semitism One Mascot at a Time
Photo by Brandon Mowinkel on Unsplash
My high school alma mater is not an anti-Semitic or Islamophobic school, as far as I know. But its mascot is.
What We Think About Guns Reveals What We Think About God
Man carries his sidearm to support the permitless carry law going into effect on July 1. txking / Shutterstock.com
Gun violence has become so ubiquitous in the U.S. that it is changing the very way we talk about our country. The names of our cities and towns have become shorthand terms for gun death: Orlando, Newtown, Dallas, Ferguson, Baton Rouge, Columbine, Aurora.
God Occupies a Baby Crib
There is a line from a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem about the Virgin Mary that describes the baby Jesus as “God’s infinity, dwindled to infancy.” The line captures perfectly the beautiful but also shocking idea, central to Christianity, that the infinite God who created the universe also chose to descend, dwindle, become small, become helpless, become dependent on human beings.
Hopkins is right: the baby Jesus is not merely a sentimental or cute idea but is potentially radical, transformative, and controversial.