“This is the besetting sin of American presbyterianism. When an association of independent churches, or the representatives of presbyterian churches, makes the mistake of establishing a permanent headquarters somewhere (minium requirements: one desk, one phone, on file cabinet), a certain type of bureaucratic mind is immediately attracted to the important task of getting the papers …
Ain’t It the Truth?
“Like free jazz, art rock proves once again that total freedom is enabling for a handful of geniuses, but disabling for everyone else” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, p. 222).
Labels and Bottles
“Having gotten this straight, we must then factor in the problem of labels and bottle contents. In a perfect world, things would be what we called them — health food would be healthy, guaranteed savings would be, and so on. But this is a fallen world, and we can find, for example, both ‘independent’ and …
Idol Place
“If the desert is the place of demons, the city is the place of idols” (Ellul, The Meaning of the City, p. 54).
That, and Singing Through Your Nose
“The truth is that Dylan, like most of his generation, learned most of his folk music from records . . . But to folkies bewitched by the blues, roughness epitomized authenticity” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, p. 212).
Aluminum Discipline
“We must beware of a too great reliance on a systematic reconstruction of the various references to discipline in the New Testament. matthew 18 is not a paint-by-numbers kits, and we should not assume that when we get to ‘stage two’ in a discipline process that we are at the second rung of a metal …
Even At Their Saltiest
“Add the guitar-centeredness of the rest of early rock, and you have a significant shift: away from an emotionally expressive vocalism and toward and athletically aggressive instrumentalism. With hindsight, we can see some rather striking sexual connotations in this shift. The controlled vocalism of genuine blues suggest power, intensity, and energy being harnessed—as opposed to …
Death in the Fine Print
“But when rules and procedures multipy, students of history should see it as the manufacture of rope for possible judicial lynchings. Complexity in law is a friend to lawyers, not a friend to the accused” (Mother Kirk, p. 160).
Not Urban Warfare, but Warfare Is Urban
“We could find many causes of war — ontological, ecnomic, technical — but the Scriptures affirm that the agent of war is the great city. There is no such thing as a great agricultural war. A rural people is never a ravenous people. They may make migrations, but not wars. War is an urban phenomenon, …
Blues Authenticity
“The irony, of course, is that the Stones wrapped themselves in the cloak of blues authenticity while rejecting the crowd-pleasing manner that is an essential part of every bluesman’s stock in trade” (Bayles, Hole in our Soul, p. 195).