“When you say about a painting, a music video, or a pair of jeans, ‘I like this,’ you make some sort of judgment, but it’s not a judgment of quality. In Nobrow, judgments about which brand of jeans to wear are more like judgments of identity than quality. These judgments do not depend on knowledge …
Inescapable Blasphemy Laws
“Every culture has blasphemy laws. They are not always called that, but no society allows citizens to rail against the reigning deity. In our pluralistic times, these blasphemy laws are called ‘hate crimes’ legislation, among other euphemisms, but they are really religious protections to keep the reigning god, demos, from being blasphemed” (The Case for …
No Kidding?
“When you do away with the old High-Low [brow] hierarchy, people become more obsessed than ever with status” [John Seabrook, Nobrow (New York: Vintage Books, 2000), p. 168].
The Real Salt and Light Argument
“Rightly understood, this is the true ‘salt and light’ argument. Before we can win the children of this world, we have to stop losing our children to that world. And as we teach them their identity in Christ in such a way that they embrace that identity and the terms of the covenant that define …
Why NPR Listeners Think They Are Aristocrats
“For more than a century, the elite in the United States has distinguished themselves from consumers of commercial culture, or mass culture. Highbrow/lowbrow was the language by which culture was translated into status—the pivot on which distinctions of taste became distinctions of caste. The words highbrow and lowbrow are American inventions, devised for a specifically …
Constant, Total War
“Van Til is not urging the physical destruction of non-Christians — note his ‘spiritual weapons only and always” — but he does see the task of the Christian educator as one of constant, total war. Every thought must be made captive to Christ. A Christian school is not the place where we complete this task, …
The Movie of Me
“I stood there for a moment longer in the yellow tornado light while the techno music in my ears reorganized my consciousness into cleaner lines than the gangsta vibe . . . implanting in the folds of my cortex the way poetry used to before I got a Discman and made pop music the soundtrack …
And Not Just Billy Idol Either
“My answer to the question about Christian involvement with popular culture is essentially the same. You can enjoy popular culture without compromising Biblical principles as long as you are not dominated by the sensibility of popular culture, as long as you are not captivated by its idols.” [Kenneth Myers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede …
Great Books Aimlessness
“Those who have participated in ‘great books’ conversations inspired by this approach to modern classicism know that few things can wreck the intellectual party more quickly than a claim of absolute truth, goodness, or beauty. The student is equipped for anything the great conversation might bring to him, except for one thing — answers. To …
Churchacabana
“But try telling someone from the Barry Manilow School of Liturgy that something is schlock and they will regard you as an arrogant elitist.” [Kenneth Myers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1989), p. 99].