John Mark Reynolds on Faith and Culture
My Mother and I used to laugh at greeting cards that began: what is a x? No relationship was so sacred that a card couldn’t make it ludicrous. They were either so over the top, “a mother is an angel in suburbia,” or weirdly negative, “we have never talked much about feelings” that we avoided [...]
There are no orcs in a real war. Humans fight and die in a war, not faceless Star Wars clones or robots…at least not yet. For this reason war is a fearful thing not to be fought lightly. Centuries of Christian teaching have labored to make war rarer, if it cannot disappear altogether, Christians have [...]
From my London window, I see the problem of a border out of control and two parties unwilling to address it. From my home in California, I know decent men hounded by the government for a crime, illegal entry, committed years ago. The issue of illegal aliens in the United States is difficult for a [...]
Verona is Juliet’s home in my mind. Romeo is there too, but Juliet! It is incidental to me that she did not exist and Shakespeare made it all up borrowing from several other sources. (Students: it is plagiarism unless you make it so much better people are honored you took their stuff.) So my problem [...]
European history turns the mind to tyranny, especially in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Easy to condemn past tyrants, but hard to root out tyranny in parties, philosophies, or religions we favor. Easy for me to see the odium of political correctness on the Left, intolerance in secularism, and failures of Islam. Seeing my own tendencies [...]
My greatest crimes against high culture are plain to all: Diet Coke, Disneyland, Packer football, and Styx. Hidden deeply away is a confession so terrible that I can only now admit it: I love musical theater and I adore the “Sound of Music.” I know I should think of Salzburg, on the rare chances I [...]
Sitting in Saint Stephens cathedral in Vienna waiting for mass lifts me out of my time and joins me to Christians of all times. I am not a Roman Catholic, but like all Christians I am a catholic, part of the one holy Church. The Hapsburg dynasty came and went and this church remains. The [...]
The Abduction from the Seraglio is Mozart’s message to America in the person of Constanze. I know nothing of this opera save that Constanze, a powerful woman, stands in the middle of it. Abducted by Turks of the sort that only exist in the Viennese opera, she stays true to her beloved, a man she [...]
Prague is love. New York City is famously for lovers, but Prague is for love. Lovers might fail love, but love never fails and so Prague is greater than New York City. How can this be? I love New York, but Prague is beyond judgment. To sit on a hill overlooking the city with your [...]
Magic Flute is mad beauty, but so beautiful that beauty is almost enough. The story is a mash up of Free Masonry, Enlightenment religion, and every bad holdover of Medieval Catholicism with no virtues. If it makes sense, it is simply by pure eroticism leading to love. There is a magic flute, but the hero [...]
Follow Patheos on
Copyright 2008-2013, Patheos. All rights reserved. Terms of Service | Patheos Privacy Policy | Site developed by Avalon Consulting, LLC
Follow Patheos
Evangelical: