By Kate Walker
I had always thought of the song “Shout to the Lord" as a bit hackneyed, but not offensive. Until, that is, my roommate and I stumbled across a performance of it on American Idol. What was disturbing was the context. Eight bright-faced young American Idol finalists were singing "Shout to the Lord" with full voice and earnest expressions.
After a recent visit to New Brunswick Correctional Center in Lawrenceville, Virginia, I was confused about exit protocol and asked my inmate-friend how to get out. “Sorry,” he joked, “I’ve had no luck getting out of this place.” He went through his door and back to year 23 of his incarceration. Then security guards opened a different sliding steal gate for me, checked to see if I still had the ultraviolet stamp the guard gave me when I came in, slid open another blast door, and I was free.
I’d been carefully prepped. Don’t wear blue jeans, they said.
By Zach Kincaid
A CBS story on regenerative medicine reports on a man who, after losing the tip of his finger in a work accident, sprinkled on the wound a powdery substance made from pig intestines. The finger grew back in four weeks. The scientists now believe they can trick the body to repair itself instead of nubbing off serious injury. They hope the technology can one day reproduce skin cells and whole limbs, blood vessels and complete organs. Wearing out may be optional in the future.
By Jonathan Marlowe
The Bourne movie trilogy begins in water, with the motionless body of Jason Bourne floating in the Mediterranean Sea. When Jason is rescued, he has no memory of who he is, but it soon becomes clear that he has the skills of a CIA-trained assassin. He comes out of the water alive, but his memory and identify have been lost.
By Zach Kincaid
Relevant Church in Tampa, Florida, is challenging its members to participate in a 30-Day Sex Challenge. The premise is for married couples to have sex every day for 30 days. From their site:
People are not having enough sex. An epidemic of breakups proves the needs that lead to a great sex life are being overlooked. Dirty dishes, frumpy clothes, and a lack of authentic connections are killing the romance. A great sex life is a challenge and takes focus, determination, and planning. Some say it’s an unrealistic goal, but we disagree. We believe you can have a great sex life, in fact we believe God wants you to have a great sex life.
When I heard this, I thought of the temple prostitution circuit of Rome and Greece.
My interlocutor had just read my glowing review of Knocked Up. He was concerned, not so much about the movie’s raunch level, as about its hot-button politics. “Isn’t that movie pro-life?” he asked hesitantly.
Indeed, Christianity Today proclaimed 2007 as the year pro-life went Hollywood with movies like Knocked Up, Juno and Waitress.
After teaching a class recently I found myself confronted by a student about material that he found to be pornographic. The offending material was in an essay by Jeanne Kilbourne on advertising and sexual violence, which includes examples of advertisements found in mainstream publications. This particular student, who had been homeschooled, had never seen such ads. He was literally shaking when he approached me after the class. “Do you really think it is a good idea to put these images in front of young people?” he asked. “I want to save my eyes for my wife. My purity is for her alone.”
It’s always dangerous to weigh in on bumper sticker ethics. But on a recent cross-country drive I saw a couple of gems:
“I’m already against the next war.”
This one is clearly and cleverly aimed at the planners of an attack on Iran, who are desperately trying to start another theater in the War on Terror before their chief leaves the White House. The same drummed-up arguments are being rolled out, the same sham outrages and veneer of human rights arguments. This bumper sticker ethicist sees the plan, opposes it and is telling people about it.
The problem: how does he know?
“Darwinism is a lie.” Not the sort of comment one would expect in the guestbook of an exhibit on the greatness of Charles Darwin’s life and influence. What did the complainer expect?
Chicago’s Field Museum has presented Darwin in an effort to stem the rising antagonism toward evolution embodied in the Intelligent Design movement and in the high percentage of Americans who report to disbelieve his theory of origins. But why would someone who thinks Darwin is a lie have bothered to attend?
By Jonathan Marlowe
Martin Luther King was 39 years old when he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. This January, I am turning 39 years old. What have I done with my life, compared with what Martin Luther King did with his?
Well, not much. But that’s OK.
Rowan Williams once said that when he gets to heaven, God will not ask him why he was not Martin Luther King; God will ask him why he was not Rowan Williams. I figure when I show up at the pearly gates, there’s a good chance that God will ask me, “Why weren’t you Jonathan Marlowe?”
By Lillian Daniel
Would you read your late mother’s diaries?
Doug Block’s 2006 documentary, 51 Birch Street, opens with a home movie shot of his parents’ 50th wedding celebration, a happy, low-key gathering in the suburban back yard where they raised their three children. They share a few clichés about the secret to staying married, nothing deep, but touching nonetheless.
These home movies might have remained only home movies, but when Block’s mother died suddenly, he began to review the old tapes with new intensity.
Doesn’t every child wonder what went on behind the closed doors of our parents’ relationship? What exactly were they arguing about late at night in the kitchen? Who started the fight and how was it magically resolved by the next morning?
By Phil Blackwell
At a public discussion on religion, politics and the secular public square here in Chicago, I was deeply unsettled by the hostility toward Christianity that came from some of the panelists and all of the audience participants. Here are some examples:
“Christianity is triumphalistic; it believes that it is better than all the others.”
“Christianity is dogmatic and thinks that it possesses all the truth.”
“Christianity is irrational and fights against creative thinking.”
By Anne Robertson
“I’m now a level 13 Night Elf Druid in World of Warcraft,” I announced proudly to the administrative assistant in the office. She gave me a blank stare.
Of course there are any number of reasons for such a look. There’s “Level 13 is not anything to be proud of, you dork,” or “It’s not exactly a new game, you cave troll.”
But if I had to guess, I’d say the reason for the blank stare was “But you’re the executive director of the Massachusetts Bible Society!” Although 9 million people play the online game worldwide, some things don’t mix, like being both United Methodist clergy and a Night Elf Druid.
Amy Frykholm’s article on pastors and porn quotes a former sex addict who describes the dynamics that lead to such addiction: a low-paying, high-demand job done in a pressure-cooker of loneliness that yields a posture of merit: “I deserve this.” The article leads me to ask: what’s the Christian response to pornography? John Paul II liked to say that pornography is not wrong because it reveals too much, but because it reveals too little. That seems spot on. It also seems to me that a posture of merit, the demand that “I deserve this” bit of faux intimacy, is best met with the Eucharist, literally our “thanksgiving,” in which we turn from a posture of self-regard to one of gratitude. Any other thoughts on the Christian answer to porn?
By Louis R. Carlozo
Depending on which story you believe, Elvis Aaron Presley either frequents the back-road Burger Kings of America, is in a witness protection program, runs guns as an African mercenary with Doors lead singer Jim Morrison, inhabits an alien planet after surviving an UFO abduction. . . or, he Left the Building for Good on August 16, 1977.
The overwhelming majority of Elvis fans, who “get” that the King died sad, addicted and lonely, might find solace in the words of Mary Ann Mobley, a 1959 Miss America who acted alongside Presley in the 1965 films “Harum Scarum” and “Girl Happy.” “I’ve heard all the stories about what happened to him later in his life,” says Mobley. “I feel like those of us who knew him let him down. I’ve spoken with Joe Esposito, his road manager, many times—a lot of people tried to help him, but maybe if some of us had called him and said, ‘Come on up’. . . .I think his life closed in on him.”
Mobley, who plans to be in Memphis to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Elvis’s passing, points out a fact that sometimes gets lost in all the hullabaloo of candlelight fan vigils, cheap Elvis bobbleheads and armies of Elvis impersonators (skydiving outfits optional): The King, for much of his life, looked up to a ruler of a higher strata: Jesus Christ.
By Louis R. Carlozo
Not long before his death, Jerry Falwell, the Religious Right’s resident lightning rod and 800 lb. theological/political gorilla, crowed that the concern over the environment was a demonic distraction from the “real” issues of the day, including gay marriage. It’s not my job to dissect the moral “right versus wrong” of homosexuality. But many homosexuals are Christians. Therefore, it doesn’t matter whether you embrace the concept of the “more light” church or try to call a technical foul by waving the Book of Romans around like a Pharisee dressed in a referee’s outfit—no Christian should be claiming the moral authority to take away a person’s proclaimed faith in Jesus.
By Lou Carlozo
The beginning of the end has come for Tony Soprano: April 8 marks the first episode in the last season of HBO’s ultrapopular series The Sopranos. When that final bullet casing falls to the floor, that final drop of murderous blood is shed, that final sip of Chianti passes over some sated hit man’s lips, I know I’ll party, as will many of the show’s devotees.
Except that I’m no Sopranos fan.
I remember the first time I heard a British academic who wasn’t a genius. He misplayed a routine groundball of a question. He looked puzzled, then uncomfortable, then said something unintelligible. I’d heard many academics do this, but never one with a British accent. “What’s wrong with you?” I wondered. “Everyone with your accent is brilliant,” to use a Britishism.
By Lou Carlozo
What is it about Christian music that keeps its artists—and proponents—from taking a good look in the mirror and owning up work that falls far, far short on the quality scale?
I used to be an enthusiastic contributor and music critic to CCM and many other Christian music magazines, including 7 Ball, Mars Hill Review, Christian Single and Acaza.com. Yet today, my strong feeling is that the process of dishing direct, honest Christian music criticism has stagnated—and may even have gone into reverse gear.
By Rodney Clapp
When I turned on the recently released dvd of Oscar-nominated Babel, I expected that Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu would treat the themes of Genesis 11—hubris and tower-building and the confusion of languages. What I did not expect was how the film would make me ponder other biblical themes.
The claim is often made that media and intellectual elites in the U.S. are thoroughly secular and are uncomprehending when it comes to religion. How many times have you heard someone cite Peter Berger’s witticism “If India is the most religious country in the world, and Sweden the least religious, then America is a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes”?
It’s a great line, but the reality is more complicated, both in the media and the university.
What happens when a grant foundation works both to integrate science and religion, and also to address each in depth? The Templeton Foundation has tried hard to do just that, and has poured enormous resources into the effort. But as John Dart reports, some have called the foundation an advocate for Intelligent Design—and Templeton is not happy about it.
Shannon Jung’s Sharing Food: Christian Practices for Enjoyment (Fortress) reminds me anew of the importance of eating in a sustainable way. The U.S. produces 500 unnecessary calories for every man, woman and child in this country every day, yet we have some 35 million people who are "food-insecure," that is, hungry.
By Jean K. Dudek
A person walking through the exhibit at the Sackler Gallery in Washington who doesn’t know about the artifacts might think: “Ragged scrap with incomprehensible squiggles.” But someone who knows what they are will be amazed, and want to shout, as I did, “I can’t believe they have that here!”
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