“Art is a discipline rooted in a specific culture.” [E. Christian Kopff, The Devil Knows Latin (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 1999), p. 24]
Free the Goldfish!
“Creativity is possible only as the final stage in a long, rigorous absorption of the teachings and discoveries of the past. The last thing we need for the future of our country or of our young people is one more lunatic smashing goldfish bowls in order to free the goldfish” [E. Christian Kopff, The Devil …
Intellectual Carnage
“There is perhaps no more dramatic index of the disaster that has befallen liberal arts education in this country than the contempt in which the new academic orthodoxy holds this constellation of ideas about the nature and goals of higher education. It would be difficult to overstate the resulting intellectual carnage” (Roger Kimball, Tenured Radicals, …
Hospitality and Immigration
So the issue of the day is immigration. And our first reaction as Christians should always be “what does Scripture say about it?” A summary of biblical teaching is that immigration of a certain kind is a blessing, and is fruitful, both to the immigrant and the land to which he comes. Immigration of another …
Doublethink
“Perhaps Marcuse’s ability to reconcile liberty and dictatorship has come of age, and Orwell’s characterization of such thinking as ‘doublethink’ does not bring the flash of recognition that it once did” (The Shadow University, p. 96).
Deconstructing Nehushtan
“There is another sense in which we can ‘burn incense’ to a work of art. We can overmystify it, ascribing to it supernatural or religious functions The passage on the destruction of the serpent image says that ‘it was called Nehushtan.’ The Hebrew is rather ambiguous here, but the King James Version, in what scholars …
Card Tricks At Presbytery
As the Dah Vinchee imbroglio heats up, we see here the “answer a fool according to his folly” response. Turns out Barney Fife of Mayberry had a son . . . HT: Dale Courtney A young man in our congregation here at Christ Church invented his own amazing card trick, and it can see seen …
Sure. Why Not?
For any of you who are thinking about coming to Trinity Fest this August (and why wouldn’t you be?), this is a reminder that really has your best interests in mind. Early registration gets the worm, and a bird in the hand is worth six in an aviary. All of which is to say, actually, …
Sounds Like Some People I Know
“Many codes explicitly encourage charging a student with sexual harassment even if his intent is innocent . . . The City University of New York warns that ‘sexual harassment is not defined by intentions, but by impact on the subject.’ As Herbert London, a dean and a professor of humanities of New York University, notes, …
How Art Should Be Didactic
“Artistic images can appeal powerfully to the emotions, kindling pity at human suffering or outrage at evil. Art that is ostentatiously didactic, having no other merit than that of the lesson it teaches, generally fails both as art and as teaching. This is often because it starts preaching or lecturing in propositional terms instead of …