Rich Christians In An Age of Expensive Authenticity

Chapter One of A Generous Orthodoxy is actually Chapter Two, because of that odd Chapter Zero, and is a chapter which, for our purposes here, I will be calling Chapter Six. No, not really. The chapter is titled “Seven Jesuses I Have Known,” and is an outstanding example of the dabbler approach to truth that …

As Ever, the Logic

“For all the tattoos, Details message is no different than any other lifestyle magazine: Who you are depends on what you consume, and how hip you are depends on how enthusiastically you keep up with the new. Nonconformity may be the language, but fashion is, as ever, the logic.” [Frank and Weiland, editors, Commodify Your …

Rock and Roll Samurai

“Despite the whirlwind of trends, Details retains a unifying philosophical viewpoint — the archetypical American male is a rebel consumer . . . ‘These guys are not only musicians, or even rock stars,’ the magazine affirmed, ‘but modern men, emblems of a new masculinity.’ These ‘rock and roll samurai live outside the law, but are …

Don’t Sugar Coat It. Just Tell Them.

“The late Joseph Bayly wrote a delightful little book some years ago called The Gospel Blimp, which lampooned the earlier forms of this kind of evangelistic absurdity, back when inane evangelicalism was still slogging it out in the minors. It is hard to imagine what a man of his gifts would do with the embarrassment …

Department of Hip Resources

“The people who staff the Combine aren’t like Nurse Ratched. They aren’t Frank Burns, they aren’t the Church Lady, they aren’t Dean Wormer from Animal House, they are not those repressed old folks in the commercials who want to ban Tropicana Fruit Twisters. They’re hipper than you can ever hope to be because hip is …

Dreadlocks at Taco Bell

“But one hardly has to go to a poetry reading to see the countercultural idea acted out. Its frenzied ecstasies have long since become an official aesthetic of consumer society, a monotheme of mass as well as adversarial culture. Turn on the TV and there it is instantly: the unending drama of consumer unbound and …