“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 …
Rocks in the Drive
When strings are pulled taut, the cello is tuned,The wood holds the wine that is seasoned and old.Dark music poured out and emptied the cask,And rolled in my goblet, rich, tawny and toldHow holiness tastes, how righteousness laughs. You shall be as God, the great dragon had said,Philosophers argue their shapes in the fireAnd each …
Polygamy and Such
An odd skirmish has broken out, and you can note a bit of it at Dale Courtney’s blog here. In the past, we (Dale included) have advanced the argument that to legalize homosexual marriage is necessarily to open the door to polygamous marriage. This used to be laughed at by authorized solons and pundits, but …
More for You, Less for Me
“Restrictions on speech are justified by the assertion of a compelling need to promote freedom for some by limiting freedom for others. To the code writers, as to Marcuse, freedom is a zero-sum game” (The Shadow University, p. 83).
Viva Las Worship
“I have heard soloists in church working the crowd like a lounge singer, striding into the audience with a Las Vegas patter, crooning into the mike, costumed for a screen test.” [Gene Veith, State of the Arts (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991), pp. 202]
Apostles of Uplift
“Much Christian art today of the sort sold in bookstores is ‘uplifting’ in a sentimental and optimistic way, as if looking on the sunny side were a cure for the cancer of human sin.” [Gene Veith, State of the Arts (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991), pp. 172]