On more than one occasion I have concluded that I am inhabiting a Salvador Dali painting: clocks dripping off of trees in surreal landscapes, and all that. Perhaps no occasion more deeply pressed this haunting suspicion than on a trip through America's heartland this past summer. I was making my way to New Haven, Connecticut, […]
"Popular culture" is a slippery and deceptive term for a massive and unwieldy reality. As in other controversies, many arguments about popular culture are frustrating because there is no prior agreement on exactly what is being talked about. Sometimes "popular culture" is used to denote any cultural activity not produced and sanctioned by "elite" cultural […]
Most of the world's faiths are cultural religions. Hinduism, with its caste system and social rituals, is inextricably tied to the culture of India. Islam seeks to apply the Koranic law to every detail of society and so creates a specific culture, as evident throughout the Middle East. Tribal religions mythologize tribes' customs, history, and […]
It is easy when you are disenchanted with your own age to imagine that a time machine would solve all of your problems. Aside from a few choice discoveries, antibiotics and indoor plumbing to name a couple, I think that I could manage just fine without most of what the modern age has produced. But […]
Can a man take fire to his bosom and not be burned? –Solomon This story is about Christians in a different place and time from ours. It is a period about which we Americans have formed some unfair opinions. Indeed, the opinions we have formed as a result of this time have allowed us to […]
To which army in the culture war do you owe allegiance? Are you a populist church growth advocate pushing the envelope of contemporaneousness in a well-marketed church? Or are you a high-brow cultural conservative who ventures from a well-protected elitist world only when an opportunity arises to cast a monkey wrench into the workaday machinery […]
