SPOTIFY PLAYLIST: October 2026 (Art & Theology)
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VIDEO: “Relatable Retablos, Vince Campos”: In this segment from ¡COLORES!, a production of New Mexico PBS, Faith Perez interviews santero Vince Campos (@santero_riteno), who paints retablos, a centuries-old Hispano-Catholic sacred art form, but in a contemporary idiom. Campos likes to relate the stories of the saints to those of people he encounters in his everyday life. Here he discusses his retablos of San Lorenzo (St. Lawrence), San Francisco (St. Francis), San Rafael (St. Raphael), and more.
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SONGS:
>> “Padre Nuestro” (Our Father) by Diana Navarro: Diana Narvarro is a singer-songwriter from Málaga, Spain. In this flamenco-style setting of the Lord’s Prayer, originally featured on her 2011 album Flamenco, she is accompanied by guitarist Juan Antonio Suárez “Cano.” [HT: Tamara Hill Murphy]
>> “Shaddai’s Shadow” by Joseph Henry Cortese: Joseph Henry Cortese is a pastor, musician, songwriter, and record producer from the Bronx. Last year he released his original song “Shaddai’s Shadow” as a single; it’s performed here at his church, Crossroads, with Amber Ojeda and Ashley Carbaugh on vocals, and he’s on drums. (See the YouTube video description for the full list of credits.) It’s inspired by Psalm 91, which opens, “You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.’”
(Related post: “Psalm 91: Fifteen musical versions”)
I’m very grateful to Crossroads for financially supporting Art & Theology with an ongoing monthly contribution. Their validation of my ministry of curating, writing, and resourcing the church to engage the arts has been an immense encouragement. If you are a church and would like to set up a recurring donation to help me continue this work, please let me know by email! (Of course, individual contributions are welcome as well; see my Donation page.)
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NEW BOOK: Be Afraid: What Horror Reveals About Facing the Darkness by Kutter Callaway: Publishers sometimes send me books to consider for review, and this is one of the recent standouts. Part of IVP Academic’s Discovering God in Pop Culture series, Be Afraid by theologian and psychological scientist Kutter Callaway “explores how our Christian faith is made better when we engage with the horror genre.” One of the book’s key assertions is, as filmmaker Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street; Scream) puts it, “Horror films don’t create fear. They release it.” “The power of horror,” Callaway expounds, “isn’t just in generating fear—it’s in giving us a space to express, externalize, and process the fears we already carry. It’s a kind of emotional purge” (25).
An intriguing argument, and one I enjoyed following throughout as the author wove together wisdom culled from his two fields with quotes from interviews he conducted with Hollywood filmmakers and others. He writes about The Babadook, The Exorcist, Monsters, Inc. (part of a whole chapter on horror tropes in Pixar films!), A Christmas Carol, and more.
Along the way, Callaway addresses the common Christian objection “Why dwell on so much darkness when the world is already overflowing with evil?”
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NEW EP: Turnaround by John Millea: On September 14, singer-songwriter John Millea from Oklahoma released four new songs “for the ones who feel like giving up, the ones who want to hang on, and the ones who are praying for a turnaround.” Here’s the first, “Good Earth,” inspired by the parable of the sower in Matthew 13:10–17:
