This note is long overdue. It's almost four years overdue, in fact. But I decided to switch over to a SquareSpace website, and with it, all of my blog work. (Do people still blog? Who knows. I do so only occasionally these days.) Here is that website: https://www.wdavidotaylor.com/.  You're more than welcome to find me there.  Or here on X, formerly known as Twitter (and hopefully one day again known as Twitter): @wdavidotaylor. Or here on Instagram: @davidtaylor_theologian. Or here on Facebook: wdavidotaylor. Thanks for following me on this blog (if you're still doi ..read more

A few weeks ago my bishop asked if I'd craft a collection of Back to School Prayers in my new role as Scholar in Residence for Arts, Media, and Culture for the diocese. I was grateful for the opportunity and ended up writing six prayers: prayers for kids schooling at home and going off to school, a prayer for high school and college students, and prayers for parents, teachers, and school administrators.  Christianity Today offered to re-publish these prayers and requested a few new ones. I added a "Prayer for a New Day," a "Prayer for Nightly Care," a "Prayer for a Time of Pestilence ..read more

Stanley Hauerwas, the theologian and ethicist who taught at Duke Divinity School for many years, once wrote that we do not see the world rightly just by opening our eyes. We see the world rightly, rather, he argued, by training them to see the world rightly, which is another way of saying what C. S. Lewis observed, that it is impossible to fully see the mystery, beauty, wonder, or terror of the world except by the help of others.   This is one of the things we had in mind when Phaedra and I created a set of prayer cards that would serve as a supplement to the book that I wrote on the p ..read more

The Psalms of Anger: Prayer Card (illustration by Phaedra Taylor) (The following is an excerpt from my chapter on the curse or imprecatory psalms in my book, Open and Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life. I thought it might be helpful to post a portion of the chapter here in light of the current events in our society and the confusion that often surrounds the emotion of anger in Christian circles, especially within the context of prayer and worship.) THE PSALMS OF ANGER "And so I continued to bear the crippling weight of anger, bitterness, and resentment toward those who ca ..read more

Phaedra Taylor, "The Feast of Pentecost" (2015) I wrote a trio of Pentecost Prayers this morning in the light of what has happened this past week around our country and in the light of the fact that, worldwide, Christians today celebrate Pentecost Day, that day when the Father sent the Holy Spirit to the first disciples in order to fill them with the transforming life of Jesus and with the fire of God in their hearts and bones, so that, by the power of the Spirit, they might bear witness to the good news of Jesus to the four corners of the earth.   The three prayers are titled ..read more

Phaedra Taylor, detail from 8'X4' Easter panels, All Saints Church, in Durham, NC Today is Easter Tuesday, the third day of Eastertide, which for Christians traditionally marks a period of fifty festal days.  This past Sunday, Christians gathered across the country, dressed in their finest (or most comfy) and raised the roof with their hallelujahs. They likely greeted each other, through their digital screens, with shouts of “Christ is risen!”, to which others instinctually responded, perhaps through glitchy wi-fi, “He is risen indeed!” They reminded each other of the empty tom ..read more

"Station #1: Jesus is Condemned," by Kevin Vandivier (2003) I've been writing Collect Prayers for sometime now. Last summer I wrote about how I get my students in my course on worship at Fuller Theological Seminary to write Collect Prayers all term-long, because I think it's one of the best forms of prayer that we can be praying as Christians. It's a form that frees us to pray in deeply biblically, richly theological, pastorally sensitive, and relationally attuned ways. This year I took on the challenge of writing at least 100 Collect Prayers by the end of 2020; mainly for the fun of it but ..read more

I wrote an essay recently for Christianity Today in which I explored the purpose and place of silence in corporate worship, "Make a Joyful Silence Unto the Lord." It's a topic that I've thought about for years and had a chance to examine briefly in my new book Glimpses of the New Creation: Worship and the Formative Power of the Arts (Eerdmans: 2019). As I write there in my conclusion: "Silence, it must be stressed, plays a determinative role in the proper experience of art in worship. In music, as scholars and practitioners remind us repeatedly, silence represents a fullness rather than an ..read more

One of the things that I've found most challenging as a teacher is the un-even ability of my graduate students to write a good research essay. Partly it's on account to the fact that my students come to seminary from all sorts of educational backgrounds. Some come from the humanities, others from the sciences, still others from the vo-tech or business or kinesiology departments. Some come to graduate school after a long absence from the academic world. My heart always goes out to these students in particular. I've been there. And even if they come from the humanities, that doesn't mean tha ..read more

"Moses and the Burning Bush," by Pedro Orrente (1580–1645) One of the assignments that I give students in my "Practices of Worship" course at Fuller Seminary is to write a weekly Collect Prayer. Most will not have been familiar with this term, and it will sound just as strange to their ears as it did to mine when I first heard the term in college. I will tell them, however, that if they wish to understand the basic grammar of Christian prayer, then they will need to get a clear grasp of the Lord's Prayer (the basic New Testament prayer), the Psalms (the basic Old Testament prayer), and the Co ..read more