Alissa Wilkinson
Alissa Wilkinson is assistant professor of English and humanities at The King's College in New York City, chief film critic at Christianity Today, and editor of QIdeas.org. Her work on pop culture, politics, art, and religion appears in publications including The Atlantic, Christianity Today, Books & Culture, Marginalia Review of Books, Relief, the Globe & Mail, WORLD, and Paste. In 2008, she founded The Curator and served as editor while on staff with International Arts Movement until 2010.
Bio last updated June 17th, 2021.
Articles by Alissa Wilkinson
The Politics of Apocalypse
By Robert Joustra, Alissa Wilkinson
April 24, 2017
Debate rages on whether it’s possible to engage a militantly secular age, or if retreat is, in Leonard Cohen’s words, “the only engine of survival.” Robert Joustra and Alissa Wilkinson in their book How to Survive the Apocalypse: Zombies, Cylons, Faith & Politics at the End of the World, find the answer in Daniel, a prophet who profited from an apocalypse by his strategic sense of loyalty.
Daniel is our patron saint because religious people, and especially evangelicals, often feel unsettled or out of place in this Secular age Often, we religious types take a hard look at this modern culture, its crisis of individualist authenticity, its slide to subjectivism, its double loss of freedom, and judge—not unintelligently—that this is all going to hell The Hebrew prophet Daniel is an apocalyptic guy, so of course we’ve adopted him as our patron saint of the Apocalypse
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That Pesky Third Bit
Alissa Wilkinson
January 23, 2012
Because, maybe the budding writer is in fact destined to be a great writer, but there's a long stretch of preparation ahead, first Second: The other piece of the article that I quote in the post says that there's actually a third piece, something that Buechner leaves out—our skills ...
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Vocation Takes Patience
Alissa Wilkinson
January 16, 2012
In other words (and in some contradiction to the title of his blog post), it's not so much that we ought to "forget" our passion as that we ought to recognize that our vocation lies at the intersection of our passion, our skills, and the big problems that the world has ...
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Pick Up Your Brush
Alissa Wilkinson
January 9, 2012
Richter could hardly be accused of sticking to a single style (as opposed to, for instance, the work at the MoMA's retrospective of Dutch-born painter Willem de Kooning, which closes today, in which de Kooning largely sticks to the same abstract expressionist style even as it evolves and changes) ...
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Generous Love
Alissa Wilkinson
December 19, 2011
While most of us are profoundly selfish, scarcely inclined to extend generosity toward others, even the good ones—let alone the moderate effort of just assuming positive intent—God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ came, and died, for us.
So let us remember this: while most of us are profoundly selfish, scarcely inclined to extend generosity toward others, even the good ones—let alone the moderate effort of just assuming positive intent—God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ came, and died, for us ...
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The Joyful One
Alissa Wilkinson
December 12, 2011
Why a pink candle for the third Sunday of Advent? Here's the beautiful reason.
And so, we celebrate the third Sunday—the "joyful" Sunday—with a pink, celebratory candle I've come to believe that we can only experience joy—we can only smile, and celebrate—when we know that the good things are a gift from the one who sees the bad and still tells us, rest, delight, be joyful. ...
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Advent Peace
Alissa Wilkinson
December 5, 2011
I was thinking about peace, especially the idea of "peace time"—that is, the time when there are no violent conflicts in which we're directly engaged.
Commonly understood as the absence of hostility, peace also suggests the existence of healthy or newly healed interpersonal or international relationships, prosperity in matters of social or economic welfare, the establishment of equality, and a working political order that serves the true interests...
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Advent Hope
Alissa Wilkinson
November 28, 2011
We got troubles, as my grandpa might say. We have tribulations a-plenty. Just turn on the news. Just look at your Twitter feed. Just listen to yourself for a day.
The four candles in the Advent wreath signify four things: hope, peace, love, and joy ...
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Longing and restraint
Alissa Wilkinson
November 21, 2011
It was only when I became an adult that I recognized that Christians around the world have celebrated Advent for centuries, even when Christmas was not the tinsely affair celebrated by the entire culture that it is today ...
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Not What We Expected
Alissa Wilkinson
November 14, 2011
And most religious homeschoolers of my generation would attest to how profoundly weird we felt whenever we were thrust into "that world," the world of our peers, whether in college or in a job or just when we went to church camp ...
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What We Love
Alissa Wilkinson
October 31, 2011
I met with a student and her mother interested in the college at which I teach this morning, and as I explained for them—as I have for a dozen others recently—why I teach here and why I think it's important, it struck me once again that it's not so much that I love the institution itself, but that m...
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Shaming Us Into It
Alissa Wilkinson
October 24, 2011
When that subway announcement comes on, if you're a healthy young person who hasn't given up his seat to the pregnant lady standing and clutching the rail, well, don't we look sheepish now? And the more we practice that, the more the shamed practice (of giving up a seat) becomes a habit (of courtesy...