December 1, 2014

In this issue, This Land Press brings you stories of Okies searching for the divine. David McGlynn has a religious experience on a bike trail, and Molly Evans meditates with some nuns. When Jamie Birdwell-Branson looks for God at Oklahoma’s favorite Baptist summer camp, though, she finds a right-leaning politician. Plus, we say farewell to Tulsa-based artist Ford Beckman and celebrate the life of Curtis McClinton.

Here’s a preview:

RELIGION OF SILENCE: Molly Evans takes us on a day trip to Osage Forest of Peace, an interspiritual retreat where Eastern and Western thought converge.

MAKING THE CASE FOR MARTYRDOM: Father Stanley Rother, a Catholic priest from Okarche, Oklahoma, is an unlikely candidate for sainthood. But, his martyrdom in Guatemala has the Vatican deliberating on whether or not he’ll fit into the canon. By Mason Beecroft. 

ICEE DATES, EVANGELICAL GAMES, AND MISSIONAL POSITIONS: Jamie Birdwell-Branson recounts her time at Falls Creek, a Baptist summer camp once run by James Lankford, the Republican who currently holds the House seat for Oklahoma’s 5th District.

A PENTECOST OF BICYCLES: David McGlynn hears the echo of God’s love in an unexpected place.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF FORD BECKMAN: An acclaimed Tulsa artist vanished from the upper echelons of the art world and resurfaced in the most unlikely of places. By Michael Mason.

WHEN KANSAS WAS AHEAD OF ITS TIME: A look back on the life Curtis McClinton, a black man born and educated in Oklahoma whose dedication to political activism influenced Kansas’s progressive changes a whole decade before the Civil Rights Act. By Shawna Bethell.

ORIGINAL OKIE: Father George Eber is a priest at St. Antony Church in Tulsa.