“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 …
And They Make the Classroom A Cauldron
“Moses required that the Israelites refrain from seething or boiling a kid in its mother’s milk (Deut. 14:21). The placement of this law in Deuteronomy is right at the beginning of Moses’ exposition of the fourth commandment, the Sabbath law. This insignificant law has many applications, which ostensible friends of the Sabbath need to learn. …
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).
The Central Problem With Pragmatism
“We do not want to live in accordance with the dictates of pragmatism, which can be hung with its own rope. Pragmatism doesn’t work. At the same time, commitment to something more important than immediate success often as the side benefit of immediate success” (The Case for Classical Christian Education, p. 142).
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).
Our Minds Are Not Shoeboxes
“We tend to think of our students’ minds as finite shoeboxes, and we then think we must take special care not to put anything in there if we do not want it to remain there for life. But the brain is more like a muscle. A student who learns one language, such as Latin, is …
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 …
Just Microwave It
“The reason mental discipline is difficult is that we live in a fallen world, and God has cursed the ground so that thorns and thistles grow there. Laziness and sin both make people want to coast downhill. Chesterton once said that Satan fell by the force of gravity. We like to relax our Latin standards …