One Eye Squinted

Can the Southern Baptist Convention be saved?
By Karen Swallow Prior — June 24, 2022
(RNS) — ‘Look for the helpers,’ said Mister Rogers, but right now in the SBC we need to look for the humble.

Overturning Roe v. Wade inches us back toward the arc of justice
By Karen Swallow Prior — May 3, 2022
(RNS) — Overturning Roe v. Wade will put abortion laws back at the state level, which only means that pro-life work is far from over.

Living with your parents — intentionally — can be life-giving
By Karen Swallow Prior — April 27, 2022
(RNS) — Multigenerational living doesn’t have to mean living in the basement.

Language is hard: Are you sure they mean what you think they mean?
By Karen Swallow Prior — March 30, 2022
(RNS) — Caring for each other includes the humility of accepting that we understand each other and our words only in part.

Let schoolkids read ‘Maus,’ lest they don’t read at all
By Karen Swallow Prior — February 7, 2022
(RNS) — The power books have is not in what they tell, but how they tell.

Being pro-life demands sacrifice — for a pandemic, too
By Karen Swallow Prior — January 25, 2022
(RNS) — It is not asking too much — in fact, it’s really the bare minimum — for those of us who believe we are justified in asking a woman to sacrifice much to preserve a life growing inside her body to inconvenience our own bodies by wearing a piece of cloth.

Childless at Christmas
By Karen Swallow Prior — December 16, 2021
(RNS) — Some holiday traditions offer particular challenges to those who aren’t part of a nuclear family at Christmas, challenges the rest of us might not even imagine.

Truth, justice and the torturing of tolerance
By Karen Swallow Prior — November 3, 2021
(RNS) — Too many in the church have tolerated too much for too long.

‘Cosplay Christianity’: The sin is in the denial of the life God calls us to
By Karen Swallow Prior — October 13, 2021
(RNS) — Sometimes it’s as deadly serious (and ironic) as a riot in which grown men in costumes channel William Wallace in ‘Braveheart’ crying ‘Freedom!’ while attacking the seat of democracy.

Beauty is the extravagance that makes us human
By Karen Swallow Prior — September 28, 2021
(RNS) — Humans' ability to appreciate beauty reflects our nature as beings made in the image of God.

With this much rot, there’s no choice but to deconstruct
By Karen Swallow Prior — August 4, 2021
(RNS) — Church leaders, I’m talking to you.

Don’t believe in systemic racism? Let’s talk about the sexual revolution.
By Karen Swallow Prior — July 12, 2021
(RNS) — One need not embrace critical race theory to recognize that systemic racism exists.

The social-media-examined life is not the one that sustains us
By Karen Swallow Prior — June 10, 2021
(RNS) — The public life is not what feeds the desires of the heart.

The evangelical sexual abuse crisis is the spiritual warfare of our time
By Karen Swallow Prior — May 4, 2021
(RNS) — My accident taught me what happens to victims of abuse and how trauma works.

Shame, grace and #STOPtheSTEAL
By Karen Swallow Prior — March 3, 2021
(RNS) — How we read the world depends on the kinds of stories we traffic in.
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Karen Swallow Prior
One Eye Squinted
“I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” — Flannery O’Connor, 1953 — Karen Swallow Prior, Ph. D., is Research Professor of English and Christianity and Culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. She is the author of several books, including On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books (Brazos 2018). Her writing has appeared at Christianity Today, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, First Things and Vox, among others. She and her husband live on a 100-year old homestead in central Virginia with sundry horses, dogs and chickens. And lots of books.

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