Christ and Pop Culture
"Our families define us, and we define them, mapping out a microcosm of our vision of the world, its paths, and its qualities." Read more
"Our families define us, and we define them, mapping out a microcosm of our vision of the world, its paths, and its qualities." Read more
Google’s ever-changing home page doodle has gone wild today honoring the birthday of children’s author Maurice Sendak; he would have celebrated 85 years today. The almost two-minute tribute features characters and illustrations from Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, and Bumble-Ardy. Watch the clip in full at Fast Company to stir up some childhood nostalgia and whimsy. Read more
by guest writer Adam Marshall It seems that fictional pastors tend to be cut from one of two molds—often, they are depicted as either narrow-minded zealots (i.e. The Poisonwood Bible’s Nathan Price or Bioshock: Infinite’s Nathan Hale Comstock) or as paragons of unattainable heavenly virtue (i.e. Chaucer’s Parson). While a few writers such as Marilynne Robinson or Alan Paton have succeeded in creating pastoral characters whose human qualities are as admirable as their spiritual ones, such successes are few and... Read more
I was fourteen when I first heard Jason Isbell. When he was still with the Drive-By Truckers in 2004, “Goddamn Lonely Love” was on one of those CDs that used to come good music magazines. I knew I had found something special. For a teenager looking for a world to relate to, Jason Isbell’s songs were just what I didn’t know I was looking for. Isbell is an unusual kind of songwriter. Starting out with the Drive-By Truckers a little... Read more
Wouldn't it be nice to drop all this unpleasantness? Unfortunately, we can't. Read more
In case you haven’t heard, the National Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting data about your phone and Internet communications. A lot of data. So much data, in fact, that The New York Times recently published an opinion piece blasting the Obama administration, saying that it “has now lost all credibility on this issue.” Read more
“Privacy” has taken on new meaning in our generation. When the Fourth Amendment was penned, the government had to physically break down doors or at least creep up next to a window or something to gather information on private citizens. Now, we voluntarily share most of our lives on social media, and all the rest is zinging around through cyberspace. For the most part, third parties do it for us – Google, Facebook, Verizon, our banks. When we use these... Read more
During an interview in Ocotber 2012, Ira Glass, host of WBEZ Chicago’s This American Life, talks about his own observations of how Christians are depicted in the media. Glass noticed that Christians were often shown as crazy in their lifestyle, in a variety of ways. What surprised Glass most is that the Christians he knew in his life were nothing like the kind that you would find in the media. He found his Christian friends to be thoughtful, engaging, sincere,... Read more
"For my family, to gain their country back from the gangs is a small preview of the day when 'Violence shall no more be heard in your land, devastation or destruction within your borders; you shall call your walls Salvation, and your gates Praise.'" Read more
"When prayer is reduced to a political protest in order to defend our right to pray to God in public, is it truly worth fighting for?" Read more
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