“Until the artistic impulse is eradicated more thoroughly from human life than has so far been done, even by the best efforts of the metallic civilization of our day, we cannot get rid of the categories of good and bad or high and low in the field of art” (J. Gresham Machen, as quoted in …
Root and Fruit
“We must affirm then that at the deepest level there can be no mature Christian character which despises culture, any more than there can be a truly Christian culture which is not rooted in character” (Richard Taylor, A Return to Christian Culture, p. 17).
Which Should Be Obvious
“When Christ is the Molder of character we have Christian character; precisely, when Christ is the molder of culture we have Christian culture” (Richard Taylor, A Return to Christian Culture, p. 16).
Art Striving to be a Religion
“Perhaps one of the main problems of art today has been the result of giving art the wrong function. Formerly art was ‘an art’, just as we still speak of arts and crafts. Art as a higher function of mankind, the work of the inspired lofty artist, comparable to that of the poet and the …
Boats Don’t Make Water Float
“Here I must say emphatically: art must never be used to show the validity of Christianity. Rather the validity of art should be shown through Christianity” (H.R. Rookmaaker, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, p. 228).
A Much Needed Intrusion
“The nineteenth century made music into a kind of refined, cultural, almost pseudo-religious revelation of humanism, composed by the great heroes and prophets of mankind . . . Into this world burst jazz and blues” (H.R. Rookmaaker, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, p. 186).
Sacralized Sentimentalism
“It may seem strange that Christians fell victim to the optimistic, humanistic, ‘romantic’ vision of love—so much so that its last strongholds are probably within Christian circles” (H.R. Rookmaaker, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, p. 78).
Can’t Fight Gas With Gas
“Pop evangelical sentiments, diffused in their normal gaseous way, are utterly inadequate for resisting the spirit of our age, which wants to seep into the unsuspecting school through every available crack” (The Case for Classical Christian Education, p. 208).
Still Trying to Find a Rock to Throw
This editorial column ran in our local paper last night in response to a front page article that they ran some days before. That article described the release of a book by a local academic as a response to what I have written and said about slavery. So Why Isn’t the Record Straight? Here is …
Art As Death Throes
“For the Enlightenment was to change the world. It is a period in which we today are still living, though at its end. Its aims have been fulfilled” (H.R. Rookmaaker, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, p. 41).