Features | Devotionals/Meditations | About LQ
Outdulgence and other Worldly Pursuits | Dancing About Architecture: Reviews
PRISM Editorials | PRISM Features/Interviews

About A Lover's Quarrel

Welcome to A Lover’s Quarrel. A Lover’s Quarrel is an attempt to grow a webzine from the mutterings and musings of a few friends, documenting our restless relationship with our Christian faith, our faith communities, and the cultures around us.

As the name suggests, these arguments are not hostile; rather, they flow from our conviction that our questions, frustrations, doubts and anger must be central to any life of integrity and faith. Indeed, our passionate convictions (and conversions) fuel our vitriol: we believe that our faith is worth fighting for, even (or especially) if that fight is with the faithful.

These quarrels, then, are not (for the most part at least) with Jesus, or even with “Christianity?per se. Rather, our arguments are with the cultural baggage that seems to have grafted itself onto Jesus, especially here in North America. This baggage, it seems, all too often eclipses the heart of what Jesus said and did, creating what he called in the New Testament a “stumbling block?to belief.

Lover’s Quarrel is dedicated therefore to helping people not to trip on their way to Christ (or at least hinting that there’s somewhere good to land if they do), and is propelled by our confidence that whatever is good and true and kind can endure even the most callous irreverence.

And so we commit to speak our minds, to ridicule the ridiculous, to point and mock at the Emperor’s willy and sigh lustily at the bosom of beauty, to cry with the heartbroken, to rage at injustice, to mock the powerful and to laugh out loud at the Devil—because the bastard only wants to be taken seriously.

We’ll see how it goes.

In the following pages you will find essays, editorials, reviews and interviews by Dwight Ozard, many drawn from his tenure as Senior Editor of PRISM magazine, as well as more recent writings, musings and rants, and sneak previews at up coming book projects. You will also eventually encounter the thoughts of several of my favorite writers and friends.

Again, welcome to A Lover’s Quarrel. Enjoy.

- Dwight Ozard, Senior Editor

One more thing: an apology/thanksgiving to the Rev. Dr. Maurice Boyd, former preaching minister of Metropolitan United Church in London, ON Canada, and current minister of the City Church in New York City.

During the 80s it was Dr. Boyd's preaching that kept me believing that church mattered. His eloquence and pasion fired my soul in a way that was completely new to me--without any of the pentecostal histrionics I'd grown too accustomed to over the years.

Dr. Boyd's first book--a collection of those sermons--was called "A Lover's Quarrel with the World." Obviously, the abreviated title of this webzine is deeply indebted to that work.

Sectional Introductions

Dancing About Architecture: Reviews, Musings and Reminiscences on the intersection of Popular Culture and Worldly Christianity

This review section needs no explanation, really. Just musings on what’s out there in popular culture, good and bad, important and trivial, and an attempt to make sense of it all, to ridicule the ridiculous and celebrate the glorious.

Devotionals/Meditations

Occasionally posted here will be short meditations to give us pause—especially as we go through the historic church year. Hopefully, there will be a lot of grace and very little piety (at least the false kind). And don’t worry—I’ll try to avoid anything that the President might read early in the morning before launching weapons at Muslims or poor Americans.

Revised: 5/3/2009 7:21:51 AM