David Lynch's film, The Elephant Man (1980), figures Psalm 23 in a scene about medical proof for human cognition.

A recitation of Ps. 23 in “Lifeboat” configures spirituality and race at the tail end of World War II

An exploration of American poetics through references to Psalm 23 — organized by a calendar of cultural anniversaries.

Using Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation as a lens, I summon my evangelical experiences reading Psalms to describe evangelical poetics — here the poetics of duration.

How do American evangelicals read the Psalms? Psychological anthropologist, Tanya Luhrmann, uses Psalms to study evangelical spirituality.

A personal story about evangelical praise music and absorption in songs

Evangelical American spirituality is hyper-focused on power. Here, we see how the poetics of Psalm 23 participate in an apotheosis of Trump as a mystified, authoritarian political shepherd.

Re-translating Psalm 23 highlights the song’s ancient poetics about precarity, sickness, and horror, as well as its calls for magical protection. Here I analyze the ancient political idiom of the shepherd.