All this week, the writers of Christ and Pop Culture unveil their 25 most loved things of 2013. Previous #8: Moone Boy (Hulu) #7: Welcome To Night Vale Your thoughts keep returning to the dog park. Why are there no dogs at the dog park? You frown and concentrate on the unfolding conversation. A man sits across from you in a tan jacket. He is trying to sell you a fly. It darts around at the end of a string that that he has tied to his left forefinger. He folds his hands on his lap and smiles. … [Read more...]
7. Welcome to Night Vale: “Your Thoughts Return to the Dog Park” #CaPC25
January 2, 2014 by Leave a Comment
10. Pope Francis: “He Does Normal Christian Stuff” #CaPC25
January 2, 2014 by Leave a Comment
All this week, the writers of Christ and Pop Culture unveil their 25 most loved things of 2013. Previous #11: Netflix and Hulu #10: Pope Francis My favorite thing about Pope Francis is that he does normal Christian stuff and people are all, "Holy Smokes This Guy Ammirite?" He helps the homeless, touches the sick and disfigured with his real live actual hands, and he's put himself out there as being against the "cult of money." Look, these are admirable things. Things that believers ought to … [Read more...]
Introducing the #CaPC25: A List of Our Favorite Things of 2013
January 2, 2014 by Leave a Comment
All this week we at Christ and Pop Culture will unveil our 25 favorite things from the year. It's an extremely eclectic list, comprised of 25 people, works of art, or events that we felt most exhibited God's Grace and truth. The list represents the perspective of our writers, an incredibly talented and diverse collection of men and women who love finding reflections of God's beauty in popular culture.I love year-end lists the most. Too often, entire years can feel dominated by junk, … [Read more...]
New Year’s Resolutions as an “Expectation of Faith”
January 1, 2014 by Leave a Comment
If I had to take a guess, New Year’s would not have been the Teacher’s favorite holiday: All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this … [Read more...]
19. Feminism: “Women are Rising” #CaPC25
December 31, 2013 by Leave a Comment
All this week, the writers of Christ and Pop Culture unveil their 25 most loved things of 2013. Previous #20: Mad Men (AMC)#19. Feminism Why did “feminism” make our list in 2013 when it’s been around for well over a century? This year we've been encouraged by discussions by and about women within the church. From Wendy Alsup’s call for a New Wave of Complementarianism to Sarah Bessey’s plea for Christians to recognize the way that Jesus loves women in her book Jesus Feminist; from Malala Y … [Read more...]
Todd Starnes Sold Us a War on Christianity. We Bought It.
December 31, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The media is filled with lies and liars. We all know this, so there's no need for us to point out every lie told online. But some lies and some liars need to be called out. And when a liar identifies with my community--conservative evangelicals--and tells lies to my community repeatedly and without apology, influencing hundreds of thousands of people, that needs to be addressed.Last week, Todd Starnes at FOX News published two articles on anti-Christian discrimination at Veterans … [Read more...]
23. Disunity in Christ: “A Prophetic Breath of Fresh Air” #CaPC25
December 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment
All this week, the writers of Christ and Pop Culture unveil their 25 most loved things of 2013. Previous #24: When We Were on Fire by Addie Zierman #23: Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart by Christena Cleveland It's not hard to develop a biblical argument for unity within Christian churches. We need only go to John 17 where Jesus prays that we all "be one" as he and the Father are one. In fact, there has been much written on the importance of unity for the Bo … [Read more...]
Why You Should Lay Off the “Santa Claus is Real” Stuff (Because He’s Not)
December 20, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Santa Claus is such a troublemaker these days. He's been stirring up all kinds of debate among evangelicals these days over whether it's right for Christians to allow and encourage their kids to believe in Santa Claus. On the one hand, you have folks like John Piper, who thinks Santa Claus is unnecessary and a poor imitation of the real Gift-Giver, Jesus, and Matt Walsh, who thinks Santa is a lie. On the other hand, there's my CAPC colleague S.L. Whitesell, who thinks we should believe in Santa a … [Read more...]
The Kiddy Pool: White Santa and White Jesus at Home
December 18, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Last week, Slate’s Aisha Harris called for a new image of Santa, asserting “That this genial, jolly man can only be seen as white—and consequently, that a Santa of any other hue is merely a ‘joke’ or a chance to trudge out racist stereotypes—helps perpetuate the whole ‘white-as-default’ notion endemic to American culture (and, of course, not just American culture).” Instead, Harris asked for a penguin, but that point seems largely missed in the media maelstrom that followed Harris’s foundational … [Read more...]
The Undeniable Childhood Appeal of Father Christmas
December 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment
I love this article on Father Christmas, whom Americans refer to as Santa, and the fact that children around the globe still write letters to him addressed to the North Pole (which land in a post office in Rovaniemi, Finland). Around this time of year, this post office receives as many as 30,000 letters a day, and as the articles states, it is the responsibility of the elves "to sort and reply to some of the 550,000 letters that arrive each year.”As I read of this operation, it brought back … [Read more...]
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