“When people got together to play musical instruments, they also stood in a circle so they could hear each other and blend in—an act of communal, participatory music-making, not a performance before a passive, non-music-making audience. This is still the practice today when people come together to play bluegrass music” (Gene Edward Veith, Honky-Tonk Gospel, …
True Rejection of Hellenism
“Johnny Cash . . . lists in the liner notes to his album Unchained what he likes in music: I love songs about horses, railroads, land, judgment day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humor, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak, and …
Death By Sabbath
“But the first principle is given clearly by Isaiah: Call the Sabbath a delight (Is. 58:13). And even this verse is abused whenever truncated, narrow, and parsimonious Sabbath observance is substituted for the real thing. The cranky Sabbatarian, who ‘cooks kids in their Sabbath milk,’ does not limit this destructive behavior to one day in …
Why Does the Word “Gay” Always Go Before “Lesbian”?
Well, guess what. Wal-Mart has joined the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. I guess that settles it. I am going to have to resign from their national shadow board. Coises! Foiled again!
Whooda Thunk?
“In fact, statistics show country fans to be more educated than either adult contemporary or rock audiences. Thirty-six percent of country fans have a college degree, as opposed to 30 percent for adult contemporary and 22 percent for rock fans” (Gene Edward Veith, Honky-Tonk Gospel, p. 11).
And There Are Reasons For It
“All distinctly American music originates from poor people in the South” (Gene Edward Veith, Honky-Tonk Gospel, p. 9).
In Brief, Whose Side Are You On?
“Are Christians defenseless against unbelievers who claim the Bible is X-rated and compare it to pornography? May it never be! Having laid down a rationale for the depiction of depravity, let us now qualify that rationale with context, context, context. And context makes all the difference between moral exhortation and immoral exploitation of sin” (Brian …
When Being Above It All Is Actually Under A Pile
“Statements like, ‘The sex and violence don’t bother me’ are not necessarily expressions of maturity. If a movie is exploitative with vice, it ought to bother the viewer, and if it doesn’t, then that viewer is being deadened in his or her spirituality and humanity” (Brian Godawa, Hollywood Worldviews, pp. 178).
Chocolat
“Neopaganism can be seen as the driving force behind the Oscar-nominated Chocolat (2001), written by Robert Nelson Jacobs from Joanne Harris’s novel. In this clever version of neopagan redemption, an entire French town is oppressed by the moral scruples of a patriarchal Roman Catholic mayor. The town is then scandalized by the arrival of a …
Time and Gump Happen to Them All
“Forrest Gump (1994) and its predecessor Being There (1979) are both popular movies that communicate the idea of a chance world in which events occur without purpose. The use of mentally challenged men in both films is a metaphor for chance itself. They have no ‘intelligent design’ to their lives and yet both of them …