Author: Russ Shumaker

  • Soundtracks: The New Music of Religion

    Soundtracks: The New Music of Religion

    It was just a normal Sunday in 1963 in the town of Greenville, South Carolina, when “the last pocket of resistance to secularity in the Western world gave in and served notice that it would no longer be a prop for the church.” So begins the now classic book Resident Aliens by Stanley Hauerwas and…

  • Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

    Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

    Grief happens on a spectrum between two poles. At one extreme, painful memories and raw emotions are stuffed deep inside and buried under layer after layer of thick callous. Any twinge of sadness that manages to work its way through is quickly strangled, along with whatever part of our humanity it attached itself to. On…