All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes 6
"Modern popular culture is not just the latest in a series of diversions. It is rather a culture of diversion," says Ken Myers. 56 "Since it is the purpose of most forms of popular culture to provide exciting distraction," says Myers, "we should not be surprised that over time, television programs, popular music, and other forms become more extreme (and more offensive) in their pursuit of titillation. Folk culture has the capacity to limit extremes, since it is the expression of the values and...
All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes 5
Ken Myers calls the "Music Comparison Chart" idea ("if you like artist 'A' in secular music, then there's a good chance you'll like some of the music of 'B' in Christian music") "striving to conform to the world." It's refreshing to see a non-partisan like Myers say something like this, something so apparent and yet so much denied, even derided.
All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes 4
What's so wrong with pop culture? It may not necessarily be the content of its TV shows, movies, and music, says Ken Myers. Instead its danger may be that it "specializes in instant gratification." Myers notes that "like most instant things, it may spoil your taste for something better." xiv Myers' book, subtitled, Christians and Popular Culture, warns that "popular culture encourages a mood of expecting everything to be immediate, a mood that deters greater depth and breadth in other areas of...
Christian Response to “A Common Word”
Because it would not be responsible for me just to accept the word of the video I transcribed in the previous post, I read the response to "A Common Word" issued by Christian leaders in the New York Times. I encourage you to read it and formulate your own opinion. I added the highlights at the bottom for myself, just noting some of the people whose names are relevant to me.
The best response I’ve seen to “A Common Word”
Below I've included a transcript I made (because I needed to have the text for a non-blog reason) of a new video on the Desiring God site. This is John Piper's response to the Christian response to "A Common Word," a document intended to promote Muslim-Christian relations. I'll let him explain. Note: I did not smooth out this text except for an "um" or two; it appears just as he spoke it. In October of 2007, 138 Muslim clerics produced a document—it’s about 20 pages in the copy that I...