I like Spotify. I can listen to just about any music I want, explore new music from my favorite artists (I found a new one today from the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir that was just exquisite!), see recommendations from friends on Facebook, and pay precisely...
Culture
Reza Aslan’s Zealot
I heard Reza Aslan in an interview on NPR a few weeks ago describing to a fawning* interviewer his book Zealot, a brand new title which purports to describe "The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth." I got the definite impression that Aslan (what a sadly ironic name!)...
Read moreMost evangelicals today no longer forbid going to the movies, nor do we engage in earnest Francis Schaeffer-style critiques of the films we see—we simply go to the movies and, in the immortal word of Keanu Reeves, say, “Whoa.” We walk out of the movie theater amused, titillated, distracted or thrilled, just like our fellow consumers who do not share our faith. If anything, when I am among evangelical Christians I find that they seem to be more avidly consuming the latest offerings of commercial culture, whether Pirates of the Caribbean or The Simpsons or The Sopranos, than many of my non-Christian neighbors. They are content to be just like their fellow Americans, or perhaps, driven by a lingering sense of shame at their uncool forebears, just slightly more like their fellow Americans than anyone else.
—Andy Crouch, Culture-Making, 89.
Andy Crouch
Most evangelicals today no longer forbid going to the movies, nor do we engage in earnest Francis Schaeffer-style critiques of the films we see—we simply go to the movies and, in the immortal word of Keanu Reeves, say, "Whoa." We walk out of the movie theater amused,...
Kim on Carr on How Our Tools Shape Us
Joseph Kim at Second Nature quotes Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains: Over the last few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain…. I used to find it easy to immerse myself...
Sloganeering and Homosexual Marriage
Sloganeering is not generally a persuasive form of argument: "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!" Has any American across the cultural divide from conservative Christianity ever changed his mind after reading that on a billboard or poster? Somehow I doubt...
Moral Esperanto
I shared with you not long ago MacIntyre's opening illustration in After Virtue, an illustration drawn from Canticle for Leibowitz. In it, all scientists are killed in retribution for a nuclear holocaust. Over time, people try to regain the language of science. They...
Everyone Knows Best and Everyone Knows All
These comments have come back to my mind many times since I read them. The author lays out an incredibly difficult vision to live up to. I honestly quail in the face of it. But love for my neighbor demands it, and I seek by God's grace to do it. I tried to shorten...
After Virtue
This week I've been plowing through Alasdair MacIntyre's landmark 1981 book After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. MacIntyre's destructive argument is very important, I think. His constructive argument I'm still reading through, but he's given enough indication of...
Who Had the Better Argument in the Civil War?
I've been listening to a bunch of Al Mohler "Thinking in Public" interviews. Very good stuff. I was struck by the following exchange about the Civil War. Mohler asks articulate and accomplished historian Alan Guelzo the following question about that war: Who had the...
Shame on South Carolina Republicans
I was only a teenager, but I remember the outcry among conservatives when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. Demands for impeachment were not limited to irate housewives on the Concerned Women for America blog (if there had been such a thing at the time). The...
E-books Are Better than Nailguns
Saying that e-books are better than codices is like saying that nail guns are better than hammers. Nobody appears to be fretting that nail guns will replace hammers, because they are both useful tools for different situations. Likewise, an e-book is fantastic for...
BJU Releases Music Document
My alma mater has released a policy document—more like a principles document—on music. If I understand correctly, one of the major drafters of the statement appears to be my church's beloved and respected assistant music director, Peter Davis. I do see in the document...