THE ANTLIZT: March 28, 2017

A curated selection of articles of interest from the past week related to Christianity and culture.

News et cetera

If you only read one thing, read this by Andy Crouch: It’s Time To Reckon With Celebrity Power [Gospel Coalition]

Easter is calling me back to church. [NYT]

Christianity as default is gone: the rise of a non-Christian Europe. “The new default setting is ‘no religion’, and the few who are religious see themselves as swimming against the tide…In 20 or 30 years’ time, mainstream churches will be smaller, but the few people left will be highly committed.” [Guardian]

Being Christian at SXSW. “Turns out that perhaps the hardest thing about being a Christian at SXSW isn’t that there is nothing here for us, it’s having to pretend that we would rather be someplace else.” [1MoreFilmBlog]

In Search of God’s Perfect Proofs. “Paul Erdős, the famously eccentric, peripatetic and prolific 20th-century mathematician, was fond of the idea that God has a celestial volume containing the perfect proof of every mathematical theorem. “This one is from The Book,” he would declare when he wanted to bestow his highest praise on a beautiful proof. Never mind that Erdős doubted God’s very existence. ‘You don’t have to believe in God, but you should believe in The Book,’ Erdős explained to other mathematicians.” [Quanta]

The great sadness of Ben Affleck. “Last Saturday, almost exactly two years after Affleck denied its existence, the [massive gaudy phoenix] back tattoo returned to haunt the headlines, itself a phoenix rising from the ashes of gossip rags past.” [New Yorker]

On the heroic and saintly sacrifice of Lt. Col. Arnaud Beltrame: “I suspect most of us would like to at least think we would have the courage to offer our lives for another. I know I hope I would. But would I really?” [Patheos]

Whence the #metoo movement? “Rarely has a generation of ideologues been less honest about the consequences of its agenda than the 1960s Peace & Love generation, which sold its prescriptions as the apogee of freedom and attributed all inadequacies and negative side-effects to a surfeit of false shame or overdeveloped user-conscience. Sexual licentiousness was presented as liberty, cost-free fun, the surrogate of the infinite, as though the human body were a complimentary resource, adrift from its situation in the humanity of the ensouled being. The wastages and casualties of this misunderstanding were swept up by psychotherapists and placed in the bin marked ‘indeterminate symptoms.'” [First Things]

The Jumpsuit That Will Replace All Clothes Forever. [Paris Review]

Why this man kayaked across the the Atlantic at 70 (for the third time). ““The more you don’t believe in Polish people, the more determined we are. To prove themselves, Polish people will endure everything. If you aren’t willing to suffer, you can do nothing. You can sit and die. This is the only one thing you can do.” [NYT]

It’s Time to Tell Your Kids It Doesn’t Matter Where They Go To College. [Time]

The case against Facebook. “It’s not just about privacy; its core function makes people lonely and sad.” [Vox]

What will Alaska be without winter? [New Yorker]

Music

A Lenten tune for Holy Week: Ex Cathedra, the UK choir and music ensemble, performs Monteverdi’s “Maria, quid ploras?”