Today the LA Review of Books has a new review essay from me about Joshua Dubler’s essential book about prison and American religion, Down in the Chapel.

It’s winter, early 2006. And in winter, Dubler has come to see, “when the wind pushes up from the valley, driving rain and snow sideways into the worn concrete of the wall’s outer shell, the prison feels suddenly like a refuge and the world outside apathetic and grim, a place for coyotes and bears, but not remotely suited for men.” There’s an accusation here, of course, because they are men who live here. And they’re taking refuge from the rest of us. We put them there.

In a new story for Religion News Service, Kimberly Winston wonders whether someone can be question the literal reality of the Resurrection and still be a Christian. She asked me what I thought.

“There is only one story to be told of a single man who dies and then rises,” Korb said. “But if we think about the metaphor of the Resurrection, that allows us to return to the story year after year and find new meaning in it.”

Monday evening, February 10, at NYU’s Kimmel Center for University Life, I’ll be moderating a panel discussion of Byron Hurt’s documentary Soul Food Junkies. Panelists include Jordyn Lexton, founder of Drive Change, and Roy Waterman, the organization’s head chef; Anim Steel, founder of Real Food Generation; and NYU Gallatin professor Myisha Priest, recepient of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Fellowship (2009-2010) and most recently, the Paul Cuffe Memorial Fellowship.

Free and open to the public.

Time: 6:00 PM-9:00 PM

Location: 60 Washington Square South (Kimmel Hall, room 905/6)

Find additional details here.

January 22, starting at 1p, I’ll be hosting a discussion of two short films, The Heir (Belgium, 2011) and Urban Tundra (Estonia, 2011), as part of the Rubin Museum’s “Lunch Matters” series. Our topic will be prayer. Visit the Rubin Museum’s website for more information.

Slate Book Review is running my review of Richard Powers’s latest novel, Orfeo. 

But mainly, over his career Powers has shown himself to be a musician with ever-changing time signatures, a time traveler who doesn’t see much value in keeping time—probably because he understands that time can’t keep us. In the face of music, for Els in Orfeo, “Time turns to nothing.” And if we allow ourselves to listen, really listen, Powers seems to say, we’ll be left, too, like Els, beyond time—and with swelling souls, beyond ourselves. Each of us, with luck, a little infinity.

Word came earlier this month of the sale of a new novel by Marilynne Robinson. This got me thinking about a few pieces I had written about her work over the years, none of which had I previously collected here. They have now been added to the Writings section.

From 2006: “Gilead, Field-Tested.”

From 2008: “Busted Review: Marilynne Robinson’s Home.”

From 2010: “Going Straight for the I AM.”

The Christian Century’s Amy Frykholm interviewed me about Light without Fire. Read it here.

Continuing my series about Harriet Jacobs’s Civil War work among refugees in Alexandria, Virginia, I have a new post today at The New York Times Disunion blog.

For her part, at least in one respect Julia Wilbur was grateful to have left Alexandria for a time in Jacobs’s hands. “Perhaps it is best that I am away now,” she admitted to Barnes, “for if I should get too mad I might get into a fight with the Rev. Albert Gladwin.”

The LA Review of Books has published my review of Reza Aslan’s latest, Zealot: The Life and Tmes of Jesus of Nazareth.

But the better story in Zealot is the cautionary one, warning us against turning away from this world, against shrinking in the face of power, against making gods out of good men and women. These are the people we need. And we need them here.

Read more here.

Today marks the end of my eight-day MFA faculty residency at Oregon’s Pacific University. Wonderful writers, students, and incredible programming. Thank you to everyone. Congrats to the graduates!