Karen Swallow Prior

Have we confused employment with divine purpose?

@karenswallowprior.bsky.social joins us to unpack why #evangelical culture taught us to spiritualize our careers…and why it might be time to let that go.

Hear the full conversation: linktr.ee/savedbythecity

Live Art-full-y Skip the robots and enjoy real humans making real art.

Nevertheless, we all need art. And art needs us. Art needs us to watch, to listen, to view, to read, to appreciate, to ask, to puzzle, to pay money, to simply pay attention.

open.substack.com/pub/karenswa...

On the latest episode of #SavedByTheCity, we are joined by @karenswallowprior.bsky.social as we discuss all the different ways callings can present themselves in our lives. (That’s right – callings, plural!).

Hear the full conversation: linktr.ee/savedbythecity

Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism "A little learning is a dangerous thing ... "

…almost any writer will tell you that you cannot produce (create) thoughts and ideas while in the judging (criticizing) mode. You must get the words and ideas out—write, write, write—and then step back and judge, critique, edit, and revise.

open.substack.com/pub/karenswa...

Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism "A little learning is a dangerous thing ... "

Folks, Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism is chock full of advice not only about literary criticism but also about WRITING.

Writers, you might want to give this one a look:

open.substack.com/pub/karenswa...

It does!

Steve Bannon Offered Trump’s MAGA as Shield for Jeffrey Epstein Jeffrey Epstein helped shape Trump’s MAGA movement through a secret alliance with its chief architect, Steve Bannon, who told him it could help him “stave off Time’s Up for a decade” in return for str...

“Bannon offered Epstein something irresistible: to build a right-wing MAGA coalition that would “stave off” the global movement against sexual harassment for more than a decade.”

bylinetimes.com/2025/11/14/s...

I am so glad to have found it at last.

Karen Swallow Prior | Substack A reader and writer attending more closely to what is good, true, and beautiful. 2025-26 Karlson Scholar at Bethel Seminary. The Priory is devoted to the holy cultivation of a rich inner life. “Attent...

‘Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill

Appear in writing or in judging ill;

But, of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence

To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.

—from Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism, our reading next week at The Priory. Subscribe now! substack.com/@karenswallo...

A beautiful reflection on All Saints' Day by @karenswallowprior.bsky.social.

Thank you, Laura.

Propane man left our annual calendar. And some treats for the dogs. They love him.

How All Saints’ Day brought me grief, then hope this year (RNS) — Just as the Christian faith is a story rooted in time, so, too, are our lives’ stories rooted in time.

How All Saints’ Day brought me grief, then hope this year religionnews.com/2025/11/11/h... @karenswallowprior.bsky.social

How All Saints’ Day brought me grief, then hope this year (RNS) — Just as the Christian faith is a story rooted in time, so, too, are our lives’ stories rooted in time.

Grief runs by its own clock. Time speeds up and slows down at whim, but runs right on schedule in the land of the living.

Tomorrow marks one year since we lost my sweet mother:

religionnews.com/2025/11/11/h...

One more day until these books will be together forever! (And not just in my head.) I can't wait to share Face to Face: A Novel of the Reformation with you all.

Erasmus, Luther, Melanchthon: I love you all, and I loved telling your stories!

A new start after 60: I found my feet in midlife, became a park ranger at 85 – and retired happily at 100 At 104, Betty Reid Soskin has had the most extraordinary life, from protest singing to civil rights activism to meeting the Obamas. She reflects on what it takes to stay strong and keep going

“A new start after 60: I found my feet in midlife, became a park ranger at 85 – and retired happily at 100”

Amazing and inspiring!

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. -A. Camus

🧡

“It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.” — GMH

Ep. 111: Finding our Callings in Every Season of Life, with Karen Swallow Prior, writer and public intellectual Karen Swallow Prior is the author of several books, among them The Evangelical Imagination, On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books, and Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life o...

New podcast conversation on callings—at all stages of life:

faith-and-imagination.castos.com/episodes/ep-....

Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock: Week 3 Melancholy, Spleen, Hysteria, and perhaps a little Misogyny into the Mix

Belinda is mortified at the loss of her beautiful curls and spirals into despair. Pope paints a literal picture of this existential space and its inhabitants. Belinda’s handmaids, who accompany her into this dark cave, are Ill-nature and Affectation:

open.substack.com/pub/karenswa...

www.bethel.edu/seminary/aca...

I will be teaching a "Seminary for Everyone" course based around my book, The Evangelical Imagination, at Bethel Seminary (online) next June! More details to come. Interested registrants can receive $45 off with the code: SEM45

Today’s run

“A sense of self-importance so high that it surpasses all limits is a mental illness called ‘mania grandiosa’.” — Leo Tolstoy

King Charles’ brother Andrew to be stripped of ‘prince’ title and evicted from royal mansion | CNN Britain’s King Charles has started a process to strip Prince Andrew of his titles and given him notice to move out of his mansion, Buckingham Palace said Thursday.

God save the King.

www.cnn.com/2025/10/30/e...

open.substack.com/pub/karenswa...

Nukes and the Pro-Life Christian A conservative takes a second look at the morality of nuclear weapons and discovers that there's more than one way to choose life.

“All human life begins the same way. Yet there are so very many ways to destroy it.”

Since nuclear weapons are back in the news (again), I’m sharing this 2015 essay of mine in Sojourners:

sojo.net/magazine/aug...