Interview

The Light from a Thousand Wounds: Corey Hatfield on Autism, Suffering, and Beauty.

Corey Hatfield was born and raised in Colorado. She and her college sweetheart, Arin, have been married for twenty-five years and are the proud parents of five grown children, one of whom is autistic. Through many turbulent, overwhelming years of parenting, Corey encountered beauty to be the great healer of trauma and now feels passionate about sharing her journey with fellow strugglers. Rather than viewing suffering as a curse, she believes it to be a gift, capable of opening humanity to deeper levels of healing and growth. She and her husband now live on eighty peaceful acres in the Wet Mountains of southwestern Colorado. She also has just recently released her book The Light from a Thousand Wounds: A Mother's Memoir of Finding Beauty in Life's Darkest Moments—a read we’d highly recommend! You can learn more about Corey at www.coreyhatfield.com

When Corey Hatfield describes parenting her son Grayson, she jokes that she could use a bumper sticker: “All I really needed to know in life, I learned from autism.” Behind the humor is a story marked by screaming nights, medical misdiagnoses, shattered assumptions—and an unexpected encounter with beauty. In this conversation, Corey, an Orthodox Christian, writer, and mother of five, reflects on raising an autistic son, walking through a traumatic brain injury with another child, and finding a theology of suffering that helped in providing real and lasting healing. Along the way, she invites churches to trade projects for relationships, solutions for presence, and easy answers for genuine compassion. Ultimately, her story offers not a set of tips for “fixing” autism, but a deeper way of seeing God, ourselves, and one another.…

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Features

Healing through Storytelling

by Martha Karas
Storytelling is not merely self-expression; it is ministry. Psalm 147:3 declares, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up…

Poetry

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Fiction

New College Berkeley's Radix Live Events

Bradley Jersak’s Out of the Embers: Faith After the Great Deconstruction (NCB’s Radix Live)

Across the Western Church, a seismic shift is underway. Assumptions are being questioned, inherited frameworks are cracking, and for many, faith itself feels unsettled. This moment has come to be known—sometimes anxiously, sometimes triumphantly—as “deconstruction.” But what if deconstruction is neither a collapse nor a cure-all? What if it is, instead, a threshold?

In this Radix Live conversation, Jersak reflects on his book Out of the Embers: Faith After the Great Deconstruction, exploring what faith might look like after cherished certainties are shaken—but not abandoned. Drawing from memoir, theology, philosophy, and the Christian tradition, Jersak invites us to consider how deconstruction, when approached wisely and communally, can actually become a pathway toward deeper communion with God rather than an exit from faith.

Rather than rushing to rescue belief or cheer its dismantling, Jersak patiently “deconstructs deconstruction” itself. He engages voices from across time—from Moses and Paul to Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, and Simone Weil—showing that this unsettling process is not new, nor is it faithless. Because, when approached with humility, deconstruction can strip away counterfeits, expose idols—progressive and conservative alike—and return us to the living Christ who meets us in the ashes.

This conversation explores what deconstruction actually is, why critique of the Church is necessary, and why thoughtful deconstruction does not have to lead to deconversion. Special attention is given to the vital role of community, the dangers of isolation, and the temptation toward new fundamentalisms once old ones fall away.…

Living in the Book of Common Prayer, with Julie Lane-Gay

In a world governed by speed, productivity, and distraction, many Christians (us!) long for something steadier—a way of prayer that can hold the whole of life. We rush to work, share coffee with friends, collapse into bed at day’s end, and hope, somehow, to sense God’s presence in it all. Yet prayer can often feel elusive, as though God were distant rather than near.

In this live conversation, Julie Lane-Gay reflected on her award-winning book The Riches of Your Grace: Living in the Book of Common Prayer and invited us into a deeper way of inhabiting time, prayer, and grace through the Book of Common Prayer. Rather than offering a history or technical guide, Lane-Gay shared how the Prayer Book quietly forms us—shaping our hearts, ordering our days, and anchoring ordinary Christian life in Christ.

Drawing on personal stories, insight, and lived practice (which she writes about ever so beautifully), Julie explored how liturgical prayer resists cultural hurry, re-forms our desires, and roots us in God’s larger story. Along the way, the conversation touched on formation, community, catechesis, the church calendar, and why praying with the Church—across time and place—mattered now more than ever. Hosted by Radix editor Matthew Steem, this event featured Julie Lane-Gay in conversation about a way of prayer that was slow, communal, and profoundly hopeful.…

Visually Sacred

Anthony Petro

Anthony Petro: Christianity and the Culture Wars

Anthony is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame, where he teaches courses in U.S. religious history, gender and sexuality studies, the long 1980s, and visual culture. His most recent book, Provoking Religion: Sex, Art, and the Culture Wars,…

Christopher Sheklian: Riches of Armenian Liturgy 

Chris is an Assistant Professor of Religion in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Mississippi State University. He has served as Director of the Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center at the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America and has worked…

Hillary Kaell: Material Religion Across Borders

Hillary is Associate Professor of anthropology and religion at McGill University, where she holds a William Dawson Chair. She has edited Everyday Sacred: Religion in Contemporary Quebec and authored Walking Where Jesus Walked: American Christians…

Andrew Coates: Material Religion Today

Andrew is a lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at Duke University. He is the managing editor of Material Religion: the Journal of Objects, Art, and Belief and the author of What is Protestant Art?, a short survey of Protestant images and visual cultures from…

Aaron Rosen: Rethinking Religious Imagery

Aaron Rosen is a writer, curator, and non-profit leader, respected internationally for his work in the public humanities, interfaith dialogue, and the arts.  He is Executive Director of The Clemente Course in the Humanities, and founded and directs the not-for-profit…

Kathryn Barush: Pilgrimage and Material Religion

Kathryn is Bertelsen Professor of Art History and Religion at the Graduate Theological Union and Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University. She has published extensively on the theory of pilgrimage, especially as it relates to art experience. Her recent project, Imaging…