This past year, and the last three months in particular, has been by far the most intense time of writing/blogging output in my life. I have blogged off and on for about 8 years, but never have I gotten so much energy and inspiration and readership as I have obtained this summer. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever done, and actually opened very meaningful doors of opportunity for me in my writing journey and career. Thank you. Thank you for reading,... Read more
I did not watch last night’s “Calvinism Debate” because, frankly, I had better things to do on a rainy Wednesday evening. Coming up through a Southern Baptist-yet-Reformed seminary for my undergraduate, I’ve heard and held more debates over Calvinism than I care to remember. To the degree that competing theologies disagree over interpretation, historical theology or basic hermeneutic controls, I don’t know how much more debating is really helpful. But that’s just me. Like I said, mostly I just didn’t... Read more
Floyd Mayweather, Jr. is a rich and successful man. According to many sources he is the highest paid athlete in the world. He is also the most successful prizefighter of this generation, currently undefeated in the ring, ranked #1 in the world, and holder of the WBC Welterweight title. If there is a level of success in pugilism that Mayweather has not yet attained, I’m not sure what that is. It turns out that triumph in the ring doesn’t always... Read more
The year 2000 saw two Oscar nominated films about men who have everything taken from them except their will to live. Most of us remember Gladiator, which took home Best Picture and has become a hugely popular cultural narrative. Christian audiences in particular (myself included) have embraced the story of Maximus’s integrity and courageous fight to avenge his family and save his country from a demented man. It’s the other film, however, that resonated more deeply with me. Robert Zemeckis’s Cast Away is a better... Read more
A couple of years ago I attended a lecture by Richard Dawkins while he was doing the promotion circuit for The Magic of Reality, a book intended for children to help them overcome the mythological beauty of religious narrative. The lecture went well; the college loved him and he had no problem soliciting loud and long applause. He performed his usual schtick, a volley of one liners and anecdotes meant to portray religious people as stupid and dangerous. It wasn’t a particularly... Read more
I own a Taylor Swift album. That information falls under the category, “Things I tell people to help them hold me accountable for arrogance,” right next to my 3 year membership in a bowling league. Anyway, I’m not a “hater” of T-Swizzle. I enjoy a good deal of her music; her early hits are sweet and innocent and buck the sexual nihilism of most pop music. Alas, her latest single dares me to soon patronize the Used Book and Music... Read more
Richard Linklater’s Boyhood is an utterly unique creation. Linklater filmed it over the course of twelve years, watching his young actors mature inside the characters they play. The older actors change too, though of course not as dramatically. Boyhood is less of a coherent narrative than a collection of someone’s memories. It is audacious and often moving. What it isn’t, in my humble estimation, is great. It occurs to me that older viewers will probably feel the impact of Boyhood more... Read more
Last month Christ and Pop Culture ran an article by Jordan Monson entitled “Do Christians Have Poor Cultural Taste?” Monson begins by recounting a trip with Christian friends to see a movie and the subsequent conversation about it. He writes that while he was transfixed by the film and moved to reflect about Christ and “the full range of human emotion,” his friends had much different opinions. One of my friends thought it was too long for a movie not... Read more
For the sake of what I want to say here, I am going to assume a couple of things. First, I assume that the narrative emerging through first hand reports, photojournalism and other sources about what’s going on in Ferguson, Missouri, is more or less accurate. In other words, I’m assuming there has been no mass conspiracy between hundreds of people to systematically misrepresent the events of the last few days (that doesn’t mean everything that has been published is... Read more
Remember Andrew Sullivan’s “conservative case for gay marriage”? Years ago (longer than you might think), Sullivan argued that the consistently conservative position on same-sex marriage was legalization. I cannot summarize it better than he put it to Time Magazine: Conservatives have long rightly argued for the vital importance of the institution of marriage for fostering responsibility, commitment and the domestication of unruly men. Bringing gay men and women into this institution will surely change the gay subculture in subtle but... Read more
Samuel D. James
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