“The most obvious result is that the one discipline is refused access to the Lord’s Supper, as well as the general communion which that Supper seals. But the offender is not being denied kindness, courtesy, opportunity to hear the Word preached, the duties owed to him by others, or anything else due him according to …
All Are Babylon
“And so we must state the problem as it concerns Babylon, for she, as we have already seen, is the figure of all other cities; she is The City in the Bible” (Ellul, The Meaning of the City, p. 48).
Roundabout Momentum
“Although America’s white rock ‘n’ rollers lacked the musical sophistication found in jazz, they had a pretty clear idea of where they stood in the cultural hierarchy. Carl Perkins put it best when he said: ‘Rockabilly’s simple music but it’s not that easy to play.’ By this light, the Beatles’s true significance is not that …
There is Never “No Discipline”
“When sin begins to work, the one in a position to discipline has a choice to make. Discipline is inescapable. At that point, we will either discipline the sin, or we will discipline the righteous” (Mother Kirk, p. 158).
More Intertwined Than Commonly Assumed
“In the end Marcus takes an oddly bifurcated view of Afro-American music—a view that is, unfortunately, quite prevalent today. On the one hand, he praised ‘black music’ as a source for rock ‘n’ roll, depicting Presley as the Prometheus who stole its spark, passing it to the white race as it languished in frigid Puritanism. …
Wonder Why They Do That?
“Both friends and foes pay lip service to the ‘gospel’ contribution to rock ‘n’ roll, but when it comes to appreciating the larger cultural significance of the music, they join forces in forgetting all about religion. Instead they focus almost exclusively on sex—a focus that distorts both the music and its meaning” (Martha Bayles, Hole …
As Though a Higher Power Were At Work
“Nonetheless, all of this is decidedly insufficient to explain the biblical teaching. There is such profound understanding of urban reality that it appears to be taken from an observation of our modern world” (Ellul, The Meaning of the City, p. 42).
And Jerry Lee Is Jimmy Swaggart’s Cousin
“The most unappreciated fact about the three most galvanizing performers in early rock ‘n’ roll—Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard Penniman—is that they all grew up in the Pentecostal church. Presley and Lewis were raised in the predominately white Assemblies of God, and Penniman in a variety of black Holiness and Church of God …
Hoochie Koo
“Young whites hired R&B bands for high school dances and frat parties. Then the craze spread to the North, where it was picked up by an enterprising DJ in Cleveland named Alan Freed, who decided to make a splash with an R&B radio show aimed specifically at white youth. To mask the racial origins of …
And All God”s People Said . . .
“But this is a slander of liturgical worship, a slander, unfortunately, that is made by those on both sides of the debate. Those against liturgical worship will often caricature it as lifeless, cold, and dead. But too often the friends of open liturgy do everything they can to confirm the many prejudices. They mutter the …