Touchstone, Award of Excellence, 2006

Last night, Touchstone received 8 awards at the 91st annual meeting of the Associated Church Press. Congratulations to David Mills, editor, and to rest of the staff--particularly a couple of unsung heroes that give you a quality and timely issue each month: Anita Kuhn, managing editor, and Jerry Janquart, designer.

Now, the awards, with some comments from the judges.

Best in Class: Journal
Award of Excellence (First): Touchstone. David Mills, editor.
“Understands its audience and does an excellent job of covering its interests. The level of prose, thought, and ideas is stimulating and profound. A healthy and informed range of letters to the editor demonstrates the publication’s vitality and engaged readership. Never panders; assumes high level of intelligence in readers.”

Feature Article: Ecumenical Magazine
Award of Excellence (First): Touchstone for “The Return of the Suriani" by Joel Carillet, March.
“This story consistently introduces topics and blocks of information with real-life, colorful, engaging descriptions and setting that serve to invite the reader into the story and also to legitimize the writer as having ‘been there.’”

Theological Reflection: Long Format
Award of Excellence (First): Touchstone for “Divine Light from Kings" by Peter J. Leithart, May 2006.
“This essay is a profound theological reading of both the text and the times. It locates hope precisely where the biblical author did—in God. It perfectly fits the mission and readership of Touchstone."

Biblical Interpretation
Award of Excellence (First): Touchstone for “The Agony of Gethsemane” by Patrick Henry Reardon, April 2006.
“This essay offers a splendid reading of the Gethsemane stories that is at once biblical, theological, and culturally relevant. It is perfectly targeted to the readership of Touchstone.”

Theological Reflection: Short Format
Award of Merit (Second): Touchstone for “Scroll Food” by Patrick Henry Reardon, October 2006.
“The theology in this piece is embedded in a beautifully poetic meditation. It engages traditional doctrine in a fresh and inviting way.”

Seasonal Article
Award of Merit (Second): Touchstone for “God Rest Ye Merry” by Wilfred M. McClay, December 2006.
“Without a hint of the Grinch, the author invites us to ponder the deeper meaning of Christmas by attending to the words of sin and darkness found but often ignored in many Christmas carols. The joy of the season is made brighter by pondering the darkness from which we are being saved.”

Editorial Courage
Honorable Mention: Touchstone for “Sinners Together” by Russell D. Moore. Jan/Feb 2006.
“A wonderfully fresh and thoroughly Christian approach to one of the hottest issues of the day.”

Personal Experience: Short Format
Honorable Mention: Touchstone for “In His Stead” by Paul Gregory Alms, June 2006.
“This very honest look at the conflicted feelings of a pastor allows the reader to understand both the humanity and transcendence of being a person in ministry. The simply but lovely writing style combines ironic anecdotes and holy reflections into a short but powerful piece.”

Now's a good time to subscribe, if you don't already, or if you do, tell a friend about Touchstone or even buy him or her a gift subscription, and maybe even celebrate this award with us by making a gift to support Touchstone! Thanks for reading.

Comments

[Bill R]

Congratulations to one and all at Touchstone! I can only say that the judges still missed a LOT of great articles.

[Ethan Cordray]

Yes, indeed, congratulations! Well deserved for one and all. I wish something by Anthony Esolen had won something, though. I await the May issue with baited breath.

[Reid]

Congratulations!

[GL]

Bravo!

[David Gray]

The awards are richly deserved. No publication is as eagerly greeted in our house as Touchstone.

[GM]

Outstanding!

[Beth]

Congratulations to all, and especially to David Mills.

[Rob Grano]

Yes indeed, congrats to all!

I, too, was disappointed, Ethan, not to have seen Dr. Esolen's name here. Maybe this will make up for it somewhat (coming in June):

http://www.isi.org/books/bookdetail.aspx?id=6a8b18b8-3874-4ede-879a-17d7ec8beae3

[James A. Altena]

My kudos as well!

[Bobby Winters]

Well deserved!

[Ethan Cordray]

I eagerly await it, Rob.

[Judy Warner]

Congratulations. I'm glad that the Associated Church Press is better at recognizing merit in its field than the Pulitzer or Academy Award judges.

[Lucy]

Congratulations to everyone who won awards! I agree that they missed many more fine articles and I also would have liked to see Anthony Esolen be recognized for his writing. But I remember reading several of the articles that did win awards and they are well-deserving! And special congratulations to David Mills and the other editors for the best in class award!

[Rob Grano]

"I'm glad that the Associated Church Press is better at recognizing merit in its field than the Pulitzer or Academy Award judges."

In general this is true, but the Pulitzer folks did show some savvy when a couple years backed they picked the fine, very Christian novel "Gilead" by Marilynn Robinson.

The Academy Awards are a different story altogether, and don't even get me started on the hideous Grammys.

[Ethan Cordray]

But Rob, aren't you cheered by the fact that the Academy Awards have "gone green"? It's a good thing Wendell Berry doesn't watch television, or he would have puked all over his couch. :-)

[Rob Grano]

I like what Jay Leno said about "An Uncomfortable Truth" -- He was surprised that the film wasn't nominated for Best Special Effects. They did, after all, manage to make Al Gore look really human.

[Ethan Cordray]

Okay, I sense a thread-hijacking in progress. Seal the cockpit!

Looking back through the archives for those articles, I'm surprised Touchstone didn't also win something for cover design. Almost every issue in the past three years looks stunning. I particularly liked this April's.

[Jerry Janquart]

Ethan! Let me know when you're in Chicago next, I'm buying you a beer.

[James A. Altena]

To bring this thread back closer to its original subject, plus to the new "Rock the Vote" post, and to another thread (the title of which I can't recall) where the ethics of fake registrations for certin web sites was pondered --

I'd love to vote for Touchstone in the "Bloggers Choice Awards" poll, but I'm not willing to give them anywhere near all the personal data they request -- which is far more than that requested by many other registration sites. Can anyone suggest an alternative?

[Ethan Cordray]

It seems to me that you'd be all right just giving them a junk email account and making sure to decheck the "please spam me" boxes. If you want to be more secure, I don't see anything wrong with giving a false zip code.

From the current running, it looks as though the top ten are all Catholics. How about that.

[Michael]

>>From the current running, it looks as though the top ten are all Catholics. How about that.<<

In view of sheer numbers, part of it can be attributed to "brand" loyalty.

[Judy Warner]

I need to take back my comment above about the Academy Awards not recognizing merit. I just returned from seeing The Lives of Others, the German film that won the 2007 award for best foreign language film. It is stunning, literally; I feel as if I have been hit over the head with a 2x4 and I am reeling. It captures the essence of living under communism, and fills me with overwhelming gratitude that I lived during the 20th century as an American. I am almost as stunned that it did win such an award. And that the audience of aging hippies in the very liberal college town where we saw the film applauded loudly at the end.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>It captures the essence of living under communism, and fills me with overwhelming gratitude that I lived during the 20th century as an American. I am almost as stunned that it did win such an award. <<<

According to some people who actually lived under the DDR, the movie only begins to touch the surface. and in fact does not portray the grim reality of life in the Workers' Paradise in a truly realistic sense. For instance, no prominent artist in the real DDR would ever assume that his life was not being monitored; no Stasi officer would ever cut the poor guy some slack. In a land where, quite literally, everybody was spying on everybody else, nobody rose to any position of prominence or authority without utterly stifling his true self and living according to the Party lie, I mean, line.

But, for all that, it is so unusual to see ANT film speaking of the evils of communism (as opposed, e.g., to the evils of Naziism), that "The Lives of Others" is welcome for shedding even a little light into a dark corner where far too many people do not want to look. Not the least, because of what that light would reveal about themselves.

[Judy Warner]

It's a story, not a documentary. A Stasi officer oddly cutting someone slack is what the story is about. Would you prefer a realistic film of the GDR, maybe showing a day of grinding boredom, or perhaps filming a series of interrogations? I am convinced that most Americans know so little about communism that an emotional glimpse like this can re-set the historical perspective of many people.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>A Stasi officer oddly cutting someone slack is what the story is about. Would you prefer a realistic film of the GDR, maybe showing a day of grinding boredom, or perhaps filming a series of interrogations? <<<

That was the power of "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich". There was a movie, I believe, but as it was issued well before the fall of the Soviet Union, it did not get wide play. A remake would be in order.

[Judy Warner]

Now that I think of it, there was a French film called East West, set in the Soviet Union, that was very anti-communist. It was nominated for an Oscar but I don't think it was widely seen.

There are thousands of stories that could be told about life under communism. I've read a number of them, some just ordinary people's stories of what happened to them during WWII. They would make great movies. But nobody has made them; they prefer, as you said, Stuart, to dwell on Nazism as the sole evil of the twentieth century. The Killing Fields was an exception, though that blamed Nixon as I recall.

[Judy Warner]

As for "One Day," it was a powerful book; actually it was my first step away from my parents' communism. But I don't think that grinding boredom would work for a movie. It would just be grindingly boring.

[Steve Hutchens]

Don't worry, folks, Dr. Esolen will have his day. (He may already be better known than we think.)

Heartiest congratulations to my friends and colleagues, and thanks to all of you who help to make this project what it is.

Let us remember above all things to Whom all of this is a thank-offering, subject to his pleasure and his judgment. Far be the day when he allows it to perish in one of the numerous possible forms of foolishness that have overtaken so many others that began well.

[James A. Altena]

Dear Judy,

Actually, I think that in the right hands a profoundly beautiful and engrossing film could be made of "One Day." It was also a seminal work for me; I wrote a paper on it in high school (I read all the novels and Volume I of the "Gulag" by the end of 12th grade), and am still proud of one insight in it. In an episode near the end, Solzhenitsyn briefly describes one zek who ritually puts out a clean handkerchief for his meal. I noted that the hankerchief was a symbol of the man's soul -- aged and worn from much use, but still carefully kept pure white and unsullied. Not bad, I think, for a teenager who was then a semi-regular churchgoer but not really a believing Christian. But all along the seeds were being sewn.

[Stuart Koehl]

The movie of Ivan Denisovich was produced in 1970 in Sweden. Directed by Caspar Wrede, it starred Tom Courtenay (fresh off his turn as Strelnikov in 1965's Dr. Zhivago) in the title role. Most reviews of the time praised the movie as very faithful to the book (perhaps too faithful), the cinematography of Sven Nyquist, and the acting of Courtenay as Ivan. However, in trying to stress the meaninglessness of Ivan's day, the movie adopted such a matter-of-fact tone that it seems devoid of passion.

Yet, for someone fully cognizant of the horrors of the Gulag, that is indeed its great strength.

[Judy Warner]

Yet, for someone fully cognizant of the horrors of the Gulag, that is indeed its great strength.

The problem is that in an American audience there would be few people even slightly cognizant of the horrors of the Gulag. Maybe it's expiation for my parents' sins, but I feel it burningly important for all Americans, not just history buffs or conservatives, to know the history of communism and not let it get pushed down the memory hole by the Walter Durantys of our time. If I ran the History Channel I would give Hitler a rest and emphasize Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Castro. If I ran a movie studio I would make several films every year about dissidents, ordinary life under communism, WWII adventures, and the like.

[Rob Grano]

Although I haven't seen it, the 1999 film 'Sunshine,' about a Jewish family in Hungary, apparently deals with life under both Nazism and later Communism. A friend recommended it to me but I haven't seen it yet.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Although I haven't seen it, the 1999 film 'Sunshine,' about a Jewish family in Hungary, apparently deals with life under both Nazism and later Communism. A friend recommended it to me but I haven't seen it yet.<<<

Funny you should mention that--I was just listening to the theme music on my iPod before I opened up the Mac and saw your post.

I saw the movie--it's really good, in a harrowing and depressing sort of way.