What bursts through gloom like a ray of white light and smashes down barriers as though they were paper? It’s what Poe’s narrator longed for in his famous poem “The Raven”, though he didn’t know it. The answer, of course, is Christ. Jesus Christ barges into the darkest places in a Christian’s heart to address misplaced longings and soothe the deepest insecurities. Longing and insecure aptly describe Poe’s emotional state when he wrote “The Raven” in 1845. As you may have gues

How can “ fifty-one percent of young voters believe the Constitution should be mostly or entirely discarded ” 1 , if, according to the Pew Research Center, most Americans haven’t even read it? That’s the question I recently posed to my Worldview English class. Then I assigned the reading of the Constitution and the writing of a lengthy research paper. (My students wished me a Happy Thanksgiving anyway!) To set the stage for their reading and writing, I first asked them to loo

Is it because his sense of humor spans the centuries , reminding us of a witty uncle who always made us laugh? Publishing his articles under the name Mrs. Silence Dogood when his older brother proclaimed him too young to write for a newspaper, and coining phrases like "fish and visitors stink in three days", Franklin's cleverness still delights younger generations. Is it because, as “America’s DaVinci”, his astonishingly broad resume of accomplishments boasts inventions as

Before launching into a year of American Literature in my Worldview English classroom, I marinated my students in poetry from The Valley...