Why the Book Is Almost Always Better Than the Movie
Originality is not a virtue often found in Hollywood. This claim is counter-intuitive, of course. Yearly we are ushered into a cinematic world of 3-D creatures, romances with unlikely characters, and thrillers with unexpected killers. The annual profits are staggering when one considers the billions invested in production and earned in ticket sales. Surely the film industry is a place where we can encounter cultural and aesthetic...
The Persistence of Place: Reflections on Craig Bartholomew’s Where Mortals Dwell
Some of the most important aspects of life are those we often overlook. Many of us, to some extent, acknowledge that it is during illness that we realize we’ve taken good health for granted. For example, looking death in the eye, even the wealthy and famous often concede: “I wish I had spent more time with my family.” Committed Christians also find themselves repeatedly confronted with the theme of remembrance as they read the...
When Technology Comes to Church
What happens when technology comes to church? For kingdom-minded Christians, this is the logical question to ask following my prior essay, Is Technology Neutral? Once we’ve agreed in principle that technology is no neutral force in human affairs, this raises questions for its usage in all areas of life. For those who worship in most Protestant churches today, technology is everywhere. Technologies aren’t just overhead screens and...
Is Technology Neutral?
After conversing with a 22-year-old following a service, I realized my mistake. I had used iPods in a sermon illustration as a point-of-contact with my twenty-first century, media-saturated congregation. Yet the young man disagreed—“I don’t think most of them knew what you were talking about”—and he was right. I remembered that over half my congregation was 65+ years old. Few iPod owners were in my midst. Though many Americans today...
Assessing the Arts
Essay by Alexandra Harper with W. Jackson Watts Walking through an art gallery can be an intimidating experience. It is not due to a distaste for art that this feeling necessarily arises, but because we simply don’t understand it. For one, art education sits so low on our society’s totem pole of educational priorities. When school budgets are cut, art and music are often the first areas eliminated. Yet for Christians today the issue...
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