Also of Interest to Professors from Brazos Press
To Set the World Aflame How Artists Bear Witness to the Fullness
of God’s Creation W. David O. Taylor
Artists are more than creatives; they are stewards of truth, goodness, and beauty. In To Set the World Aflame , W. David O. Taylor casts a sweeping vision for the vocation of artists. Drawing on three decades of work as a scholar, pastor, and global arts advocate, he shares how artists can shape the imaginations of others and serve the common good. With insights from Scripture, history, theology, aesthetics, missiol - ogy, and spiritual formation, Taylor explores how artists are called to be caretakers of the imagination, custodians of the emotions, and stewards of the senses. They are makers of life and meaning for the common good and witnesses to creation as the theater of God’s glory and grace. This inspiring resource shows artists how all that they make—from art installations and moving pictures to graphic novels, gourmet meals, and Gothic cathedrals—brings us into an intentional and intensive experience of the aesthetic aspect of our lives. Artists invest our lives with vibrancy and meaning in a way that enables us to enter into the fullness of God’s creative and recreative purposes for our world. FROM THE BOOK Gerard Manly Hopkins’s poem, “The Wreck,” did not get published until 1918, forty-three years after it was first penned, but Hopkins never wavered from his conviction that it said just what must be said and what could not have been said in any other way. . . . Art became the high road, not the low road, or even the wrong road, to the truth of the matter: to the feel of its horror, to the sense of its agony, to a picture of universal sorrow and to a way of figuring out a harrowing reality through figurative means. Art more broadly became a way to set the world aflame and to give voice to creation’s praise in a manner that neither prose nor philosophy—nor, for that matter, tracts, memos, infographics, or journalistic reportage—could do in the same way.
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SEPTEMBER 2026 • 272 pp. • $26.99c • 9781587436802
W. David O. Taylor (ThD, Duke Divinity School) is associate professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary. An Anglican priest, he has lectured widely on the arts from Thailand to South Africa. His books include A Body of Praise , Prayers for the Pilgrimage , Glimpses of the New Creation , and Open and Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life . In 2016, Taylor produced a short film on the Psalms with Bono and Eugene Peterson.
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR A BODY OF PRAISE 224 pp. • $26.99p • 9781540963093
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