“We were fully in the modern age; the primitiveness and squalor of the Middle Ages had been left behind. The poet Swinburne proclaimed, ‘Glory to man in the highest, for man is the maker of things. Whitman sang of himself, and Nietzsche, a sickly recluse, wrote ecstatically of the Superman” (Harold O.J. Brown, The Sensate …
Yeah, But the Incoherence Is HD on a Plasma Flat Screen
“The governments of Western countries do not have propaganda machines like Dr. Goebbels’, but all of Western culture is permeated by mass communications and round-the-clock entertainment. Whole populations are effectively anesthetized; independent thinking becomes rare; slogans replace thought; and logical analysis virtually ceases to exist” (Harold O.J. Brown, The Sensate Culture, p. 115).
Not the First Time We’ve Been Here
“Although it began at a time when the older idealistic view was already being replaced by a sensate mentality, the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century reasserted an ideational worldview, placing great emphasis upon God, his will, and his Word . . . The Protestant Christianity of the Reformation represented a far-reaching effort to reverse …
Assisted Suicide for Churches
“When religious groups compromise their foundational beliefs in order to coexist with the late sensate culture rather than challenging it or standing against it, they in effect consent to their own liquidation” (Harold O.J. Brown, The Sensate Culture, p. 67).
Why There’s 57 Channels and Nothing On
“Only in this century did the techniques of recording, film, television, and video make art, music, and literature in all their forms—from the highest and most cultivated to the lowest and crudest—accessible to virtually every member of society, even teenagers and young children . . . This vastly increased availability of every form of art …
Guess Which One We’re In
“Sorokin identified three distinct phases through which cultures pass: ideational, idealistic, and sensate. Each phase has distinctive characteristics and in general runs a specific course. Virtually every human society can be found at any particular time to be in one phase or another, or in transition between two of them . . . The ideational …
Written in 2003
“I have defined postmodernism as a turning from rationality, and at the same time an embracing of spectacle . . . The image waits for a political life . . . . There are more reasons to fear fascism than communism in a postmodern world. For one thing, fascism is anti-intellectual (communism is predicated on …
Which Explains a Lot of Church Services
“Postmodernism is a turning from rationality, and at the same time an embracing of spectacle” (Arthur Hunt, The Vanishing Word, p. 185).
Sex, Violence, and a Grand Identity
“Paganism can take a variety of forms, but when all is said and done, the system boils down to three simple postulates—sex, violence, and a grand identity . . . For four centuries the Protestants tried to hold them back, but the dam was breached. The gods are back in town” (Arthur Hunt, The Vanishing …
Paganism at the Movies
“The cult of celebrity fills a religious hole dug by modernism . . . The machines of show business brought the gods back to life . . . Images are pervasive, emotionally captivating, and . . . dare I say it? Sacred . . . This is what it means to be a pagan. Our …