“Indeed, it has led those who are heady with triumph to speak of this moment as being postmodern. It is, to say the least, a galling epithet to those still enamored with Enlightenment beliefs, for, to those who still believe in progress, to be called passé is a thunderclap of judgment more dreadful, it would …
This Should Actually Be “Lokism,” Prejudice Against Norse Trickster Gods
“At Smith College, a brochure is distributed to incoming students rehearsing a long list of politically incorrect attitudes and prejudices that will not be tolerated, including the sin of ‘lookism,’ i.e. the prejudice of believing that some people are more attractive than others” (Tenured Radicals, p. 9).
Education, the Pseudo Savior
“The answer give to this dilemma goes back at least to Socrates. If man is basically good, then he must do evil things because of ignorance. Therefore the savior for ignorant man must be education. The antidote to ignorance is teaching. But the contrast of Socratic thinking to the Christian faith is striking. In Christian …
Keepin’ It Frothy!
“It is a fearful idolatry and the immediate judgment that is being visited upon us is that our culture has become shallow, cheap, and vulgar. And far from challenging this emptiness and futility, evangelical churches have too often been its exemplars . . . pitching their ‘product’ to ‘consumers’ and emptying themselves of every vestige …
Making Sense: Our Secret Weapon
“Mas’d Zavazadeh, a follower of the French deconstructionist Jacques Derrida, put it bluntly when he declared in a review of a rival critic that ‘his unproblematic prose and the clarity of his presentation’ were ‘the conceptual tools of conservatism'” (Tenured Radicals, p. 8).
Papers Please
“Nevertheless, parents still have a deep faith that accreditation means something because it ought to mean something. And so they come to inquire about possible enrollment at a private school, and one of their first questions concerns whether or not the school is accredited — even though the reason they have come to apply is …
Oh. That Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick.
“Increasingly, second- and third-tier schools are rushing to embrace all manner of fashionable intellectual ideologies as so many formulas for garnering prestige, publicity, and ‘name’ professors (and hoping thereby to attract more students and other sources of income) without having to distinguish themselves through the less-glamorous and more time-consuming methods of good teaching and lasting …
Funny. The Post-Enlightenment Is Demanding All the Same Stuff.
“The Enlightenment’s centerpiece was freedom. Indeed, its demand was freedom: freedom from the past, freedom from God, and freedom from authority” [David Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), p. 29].
Food Stamps for the Brain
“But if the government adopts responsibilities that God never assigned and begins massive redistributions of wealth accordingly, this creates an ethical problem. King Ahab stole Naboth’s vineyard. Even though Ahab was the established authority, he could not alter the reality of this theft by calling it something else — zoning alterations or land reform. Parents …
Watching One Dragon Eat the Other One
“Modernity itself is in deep crisis, and the postmodern ethos which is sweeping over it is bringing not only some relief to evangelical faith which had been abandoned on the margins by modernity, but also a whole new set of challenges.” [David Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), p. 11]