If you're in the Greenville, SC area, you need to check out the show that's currently up in the Sargent Art Building. It has to be my favorite of all the dozens I've seen there over the years. My old calligraphy teacher, Mrs. Kathy Bell (wife of Bob Bell, my Hebrew...
Culture
A Growing Chorus
What I'm struggling with is the encroachment of the buzz, the sense that there is something out there that merits my attention, when in fact it's mostly just a series of disconnected riffs and fragments that add up to the anxiety of the age.—From The Lost Art of...
Farmteam Community Church
American Idol's amazing popularity makes it a very interesting subject for cultural criticism. This year's win of a former worship leader over an androgynous rocker raised the following question on GetReligion, an insightful blog: Has Sunday morning in megachurch...
Shelby Steele: Affirmative Action Doesn’t Solve the Real Problem
Challenging insight on race from public intellectual Shelby Steele in the Washington Post: Affirmative action has always been more about the restoration of legitimacy to American institutions than the uplift of blacks and other minorities. For 30 years after its...
NKJV Study Bible on Genesis 1:1–2
I'm reviewing the NKJV Study Bible right now, and here it is on Genesis 1:1–2: 1:1 ....Even though the word for God is plural, the verb for created is singular. It means "to fashion anew." This oft-used word in the Bible always has God as its subject. Here, it means...
Words of Wisdom on the Blogosphere from One of its Doyens
iMonk shares some trenchant blogosphere insight, well worth a read for bloggers and those who love them. A "Blogging Philosofesto" is percolating, fermenting, and languishing in my own queue at this moment.
Words of Controversial Wisdom from Someone Else Don’t Blame Me I Just Repeated It But I Do Think They Are Wise So Take Them Under Advisement and May the Lord Grant You Wisdom
Here are two arguments I took down from a conversation I had with a musically oriented older man who has significant seminary training. I offer them for your consideration; I thought they were wise: When people are dancing and acting without inhibition at a rock...
Obama Speaks to Poe Mill
I pray that the many black kids I love in the Poe Mill section of Greenville, SC, will hear their president's words: President Obama delivered a fiery sermon to black America on Thursday night, warning black parents that they must accept their own responsibilities by...
Ken Myers Says Something Wise—Not a News Flash
An insightful comment from Ken Myers of the Mars Hill Audio Journal, answering a question from the helpful Presbyterians at By Faith: By Faith: Christians often defend certain cultural resources and practices based on the logic that if God is using them, they must be...
Culture-Making: An Obligatory Disagreement
Andy Crouch’s Culture-Making has yielded some treasures of insight, helping me make something of my cultural and physical world ("making something of the world," in both of its possible senses, is his helpful definition of "culture"). But I have to disagree with his...
The Ethnic Section at Bi-Lo Constitutes the Same Percentage of the Store as the Ethnic Section at Publix—and Kroger, and Safeway, and Giant…
Andy Crouch’s Culture-Making reminds us that we are all culturally located, whether we realize it or not: In many American supermarkets you can still find an “ethnic food” aisle—as if only some kinds of food participate in a particular cultural tradition. Nonsense—all...
Pogue on Religion
Ever since I read this line a few weeks ago from my favorite tech reviewer, David Pogue, it has struck me as the solution to the Mac vs. PC debate: There are two kinds of people: those who value elegance, simplicity and beauty, and those who don’t. You’ll never...