*** Oxford University Press | 2022 | 288 pages (hardcover) | $100.00 When I first noticed the publication of Dissenting Daughters: Reformed Women in the Dutch Republic, 1572–1725, I was curious to read it. It revealed, the description said, the vital contribution made by devout women “to the spread and practice of the Reformed faith […]
Wednesday, 01 March, 2023 by Simonetta Carr
I don’t usually buy devotionals. I find it difficult to stay faithful to one book (apart from the Bible) for a year. But Daily Readings—John Owen, edited by Lee Gatiss, is something entirely different. First, this is the first devotional made up of excerpts of writings by John Owen. It’s a surprising realization, given the […]
Monday, 09 January, 2023 by Simonetta Carr
“Who knows what true loneliness is?” Joseph Conrad famously said. “Not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask.”[1] At first sight, loneliness seems easy to define. During the pandemic, a wave of concerns arose on behalf of people who suddenly found themselves isolated, especially the elderly and […]
Wednesday, 30 November, 2022 by Simonetta Carr
You pledge to be together for better, for worse, in sickness, and in health. But what if this sickness affects the mind, so much that your spouse seems different than the person you married? What if there are hints of danger, making you fear for your spouse’s safety and that of your family? In most […]
Monday, 11 July, 2022 by Simonetta Carr
With so few biographical resources on Girolamo Zanchi (1516-1590), The Spiritual Marriage between Christ and His Church and Every One of the Faithful is worth reading even just for the introduction O’Banion includes in its first pages. His biographical sketch does more than fill a gap in the history of the Protestant Reformation. It is […]
Monday, 14 February, 2022 by Simonetta Carr
Her contemporaries called her “the Queen of the Methodists,”[1] “Lady Bountiful,”[2] “a Mother in Israel,”[3] “a Mother to the poor,”[4] and “a star of the first magnitude in the firmament of the church.”[5] Philip Doddridge went as far as saying he had never seen “so much of the image of God in a woman upon […]
Monday, 03 January, 2022 by Simonetta Carr
Most people with a basic knowledge of English history have heard the name of Katherine Parr, Henry VIII’s sixth and final wife, the only one in the list that could be said to have “survived” without experiencing a divorce. Few, however, are familiar with her story, and even fewer with her writings. In fact, her […]
Wednesday, 24 November, 2021 by Simonetta Carr
The Writings of Phillis WheatleyEdited by Vincent CarrettaOxford University Press, 2019288 pages (hardcover), $125.00 What do we know about Phillis Wheatley? A small poll among my Facebook friends (the thirty-eight who replied) showed that about one-third has never heard of her, over one-third has heard of her but knows little, and less than one-third is […]
Monday, 01 March, 2021 by Simonetta Carr
In 1643, Princess Elisabeth of the Palatinate asked the philosopher René Descartes for some explanations about his theories on the distinction about the body and the mind – the same mind he had made the starting point for the confirmation of all knowledge in his Cogito ergo sum argument (“I think, therefore I am”). Elisabeth, […]
Wednesday, 09 September, 2020 by Simonetta Carr
Scientists disagree on its causes, treatment, and prevention. Government regulations seem slow and, in some cases, counter-productive. Truth is elusive, yet many claim to have it. I must be talking about Covid-19, right? Actually, no, I was talking about mental illness. There is a sense in which, when coronavirus first invaded our news channels, some […]
Thursday, 09 July, 2020 by Simonetta Carr
A couple of weeks ago, my pastor challenged the congregation with a weighty thought: our eagerness to reopen our church should not be self-centered. These words lingered in my mind long after the sermon was over. What would be a self-centered reason to reopen? A desire to claim our right to return to church? A […]
Tuesday, 09 June, 2020 by Simonetta Carr
In the midst of our varied responses to the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown – responses that range from apathy to anger – it’s easy to forget those who are normally neglected under the best circumstances, including people who live with or around some form of mental illness. For many of them, this current combination of […]
Wednesday, 29 April, 2020 by Simonetta Carr