“But try telling someone from the Barry Manilow School of Liturgy that something is schlock and they will regard you as an arrogant elitist.” [Kenneth Myers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1989), p. 99].
Folk Culture and Popular Culture
“Folk culture has the values and aspirations of a community. Popular culture, on the other hand, presupposes the absence of a community of belief or conviction. It is for many a means of escape from such a community” [Kenneth Myers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1989), p. 61].
Vision 20/20 Posts On Sitler
As many of you know, the fracas this last week over the Steven Sitler situation occurred (for the most part) on a listserve discussion here in Moscow called Vision 20/20. I subscribed to it for the course of a few days, and then when it appeared that continued discussion in that setting would be counterproductive, …
Playing Chess on a Backgammon Board
I want to spend a few minutes discussing one of the larger lessons to be taken from the Sitler child molestation case. This is not being done to drag this thing out, or tangle it up further, but rather just the reverse. The way that this thing has been cynically used by the enemies of …
This is Not What We Meant by a Postmillennial Takeover
“It has not gone unnoticed in the secular world that there is gold in these religious hills. The result is that today there are evangelical publishing houses which are the religious arms of secular corporations, and Songs 4 Worship, a successful collection of Christian music, lavishly advertised on the TV networks was launched by Time-Life. …
What I Do For A Living
I am a pastor. And I cover up sin for a living. In order to talk about such things intelligently, the gospel must always come first. God gives sinful man a most reasonable offer. Come, let us reason together, He says. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow. As far …
Fraudulent Meaning
“Postmoderns who have, in one way or another, pointed to the emptiness of life, the absence of meaning, of enduring, stable value structures, are astonishingly close to the truth—far closer, in fact, than many in the Enlightenment period who lived off fraudulent meaning” [David Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), p. …
Oblique Nihilism
“Once our world was centered; now it is not. Once there were ultimate principles of criteria; now there are not. Once there was Authority; now there are only authorities, specialists who have mastered a small corner of life’s complexity. We have been left to drift in the flow of melting reality. This is our nihilism. …
Seinfeld and De Profundis
“Postmoderns live on the surface, not in the depths, and theirs is a despair to be tossed off lightly and which might even be alleviated by nothing more serious than a sitcom” [David Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), p. 177].
Sick Pleasure
This is a public statement, made on behalf of the session of Christ Church: On June 5, 2006, a disgruntled former member of our church took it upon himself to post an announcement on his web site about a former NSA student, Steven Sitler, who has been convicted of child molestation. This posting was done …