“I have heard soloists in church working the crowd like a lounge singer, striding into the audience with a Las Vegas patter, crooning into the mike, costumed for a screen test.” [Gene Veith, State of the Arts (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991), pp. 202]
Three Significant Columns
“This democratic impulse exploded into full revolt near the beginning of the nineteenth century, and three significant columns began to march on the older established order of Christendom. The political revolution was accomplished in the election of Andrew Jackson to the presidency in 1829. The ecclesiastical revolution was ushered in during the Second Great Awakening, …
Apostles of Uplift
“Much Christian art today of the sort sold in bookstores is ‘uplifting’ in a sentimental and optimistic way, as if looking on the sunny side were a cure for the cancer of human sin.” [Gene Veith, State of the Arts (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991), pp. 172]
Cherishing the Banned
“On the one hand, the codes claim to cherish free speech and academic freedom, including the freedom to express even the most challenging and offensive ideas; one the other, certain categories of ‘offensive’ speech are banned in order to create a ‘comfortable’ and ‘inclusive’ learning atmosphere” (The Shadow University, p. 79).
The Difference Between the Two
“The nature of this rebellion was democracy — the rule of demos, the people. The people en masse were thought of as having final authority — over traditions, kings, customs, historic loyalties, and churches. We have grown accustomed to thinking of our democracy as a good thing, and it surprises us to learn that the …
Who? Whom?
[Stanley] “Fish openly suggested that he was receptive to the prospect of both ideological indoctrination and ideological intimidation of students. He was equally blunt in responding to the classic claim of free speech absolutists that the beginning of censorship is a perilous ‘slippery slope’ that would result in pervasive and unpredictable restrictions on freedom. ‘Some …
A Green Acre of Goo
“The plenitude and magnificence of God’s works are all around us. Annie Dillard has observed that God is infinitely more imaginative than we are. Pretend, she says, that ‘You are God. You want to make a forest, something to hold the soil, lock up solar energy, and give off oxygen. Wouldn’t it be simpler just …
A False Savior Saved
“In an important sense, every culture is the externalization of some religion. And every school exists to perpetuate and pass on that culture. As we look around at the great squirrel-cage run we call modernity, we see that most of us as moderns belong to a religion called Getting Ahead. In contrast to this attitude, …
Serene Self-Confidence
“Marcuse firmly believed that this process was capable of ‘objective’ and ‘rational’ determination. There was no danger, in their view, that the differential assignment of rights would backfire, since they were wholly confident that any rational being, once freed from the dominant group’s indoctrination, would agree with their own values” (The Shadow University, p. 75).
Just Don’t Pray At Them
“The debacle of the golden calf notwithstanding, the bronze laver for ceremonial cleansing was to be supported by twelve metal bulls (1 Kings 7:25). Not only were representations of nature prominent in the Tabernacle and Temple, but representations of supernatural beings, the cherubim, were everywhere—carved on the furnishing, woven into the veil of the Holy …