An election is fast approaching. Many Christians are distressed at the condition of our country, and they are equally distressed over the choices they have in elections. Why is “none of the above” ever an option? While it is not appropriate to use a Christian pulpit as a partisan platform, it is equally unacceptable for …
Is the Christian Faith Right-Wing?
As the crisis in our country deepens, we must recognize the culpable role of the Church in bringing this crisis about. Not only has it been a culpable role, it has been a central culpable role. Because we have not been people of the Word, the result has been virtually no prophetic ministry to the …
Choosing Between a Real Enemy or a False Friend
Tomorrow is super-sized Tuesday, or whatever it is they call it. A discussion in a recent comments thread has asked why I would be unwilling to vote for Romney or McCain in the general election if they were running against Obama or Hillary, why I would “throw my vote away” by voting for an obscure …
Pressure Testing My Footings
We got six guys to come up to our house today to shovel off our deck, and it took them about an hour. We weren’t interested in finding out just how many feet of snow it would take to kick off some unplanned renovations at our house this summer. Many thanks to the guys, and …
Disnified
“When Disney turned to live-action films, he transferred the techniques and mythic patterns he had developed through animation . . . Far be it from us to carp at cleanliness, but the sanitizing urge is central to the power of Disney’s mythic artifacts, and even the most sophisticated minds have been willing to surrender themselves …
Panic and Prudence
Economics is theological. How we spend our money, both individually and collectively, reveals the true nature of the god we worship. Do we worship the God of the Bible or do we worship Mammon? For consistent Christians, it should make very little difference to them whether it is Mammonism of the right or Mammonism of …
Catechism at the OK Corral
“Most viewers simply feel captured by a film like Death Wish or The Shootist. They are not aware of being ritually instructed, because myths derive from and appeal to the unconscious rather than the conscious mind. Although the process within an individual may be largely unconscious, the mythical paradigms of his culture have already been …
And Serves Him Right
“Beginning in 1868, Martha Farquarson developed the female redeemer figure in the Elsie Dinsmore series: Elsie was a pious heroine who redeemed others by bursting into tears at hardness of heart. She brought her irreligious father to repentance by fainting at the piano when he tried to force her to play secular music on Sunday” …
An American Variation on the Myth
“Americans have not moved beyond mythical consciousness. Moreover the form of the classical monomyth, with its symbolic call for lifetime service to a community’s institutions, allows us to highlight its absence in the distinctive pattern of what we call here the American monomyth. Although there are significant variations, the following archetypical plot formula may be …
Some Protestantism as Arch-Romanism
“The holy community which Calvin sought to set up in Geneva represents in some ways a completer integration of Christianity with civilization than anything Europe had yet seen. It is true that there emerges within Calvinism, especially in its later Puritan developments, a more negative attitude toward the cultural amenities than had been present in …