Category Archives: christianity

Calling Creative Risks ‘Good’

I read, today, an excerpt from a book called Nur­tur­ing Artists in your Local Church by a guy named Joshua Ban­ner. This line stuck out to me: We sim­ply need to be curi­ous and demon­strate that we believe what artists are doing is important—to call their cre­ative risks “good” just as the Cre­ator blessed his own hand­i­work in [...]
Also posted in art | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Open Worship and Trust

I read this arti­cle last night about the Quaker prac­tice of open wor­ship, which as far as I can tell is mostly sit­ting around with­out hav­ing any­thing planned and let­ting the con­gre­ga­tion speak/lead/sing at will. I like this idea a lot, mostly because I feel like the times I’ve had the best wor­ship expe­ri­ences (and by “best,” [...]
Posted in christianity | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Art and Incarnation

Here’s a good arti­cle about art and incar­na­tion, basi­cally argu­ing that art works because it’s not gnos­tic: it doesn’t reject the world, but rather reveals what’s really true about the world through con­crete, expe­ri­ence­able things. The arti­cle concludes: The artist does not show us the world as it ought to be; she shows us the world as it [...]
Posted in christianity | Leave a comment

Discussion on the Kingdom of God

A few days ago, my brother (who just became the father of twins!) emailed me in response to my (ini­tially neg­a­tive) review of McLaren’s Every­thing Must Change. He took issue with McLaren’s king­dom the­ol­ogy, say­ing, “McLaren seems to define the King­dom of God accord­ing to his own def­i­n­i­tion, which I don’t fully under­stand, but which seems to [...]
Posted in christianity | Tagged | Leave a comment

Derek Webb, Art, and Reform Theology

On the way to O’Hare, I lis­tened to a cou­ple Nick and Josh pod­casts. The first was with Derek Webb. He had some really inter­est­ing ideas about art, or more par­tic­u­larly, Chris­t­ian art (or the unre­al­ity thereof). He said that art ALWAYS reflect­ing the heart of the artist cre­at­ing it. Always. This is intrest­ing to me, [...]
Also posted in art | Tagged , | Leave a comment

More on Church and Intellectual Property

Here’s a story about the NFL say­ing a church can’t have a Super­Bowl party. I’m torn as to what to think about this. I don’t nec­es­sar­ily think that churches should get a free pass just because they’re churches. But here’s the NFL’s rea­son­ing (from the arti­cle, McCarthy being an NFL spokesper­son): “Large Super Bowl gath­er­ings around big-screen [...]
Posted in christianity | Tagged , | Leave a comment

N.T. Wright and Anne Rice

Ok, one more pod­cast link before I go to bed: Here’s N.T. Wright AND Anne Rice together. The title is “Writ­ing Our Way to God.” But the descrip­tion says, “Together these two extra­or­di­nary writ­ers will explore the mys­tery of the iden­tity of God and our inter­con­nect­ed­ness with Cre­ation. This Forum brings together two con­tem­po­rary writ­ers who express [...]
Posted in christianity | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Nick and Josh Archives — Good Stuff

Wow. Here’s the Nick and Josh Pod­cast archives. It looks to me like there’s a lot of good stuff in there. Here’s some high­lights (I’m not link­ing to each one, just fol­low the pre­vi­ous link and search–you’re a big boy): Doug Pagitt Tony Jones Brian McLaren (twice) Derek Webb Plenty of Cor­po­rate Responsiblity Bishop John Shelby Spong AJ Jacobs the Year of [...]
Posted in christianity | Tagged | Leave a comment

Corporate Responsibility Podcasts

I men­tioned that Brian McLaren was inter­viewed on the Nick and Josh pod­cast in m pre­vi­ous post. What I may not have men­tioned was that Nick and Josh have done a series of pod­casts about cor­po­rate respon­si­bil­ity. I’m not entirely sure what they mean by that, or if the pod­casts are any good. That said, I’m defi­nately inter­ested in [...]
Posted in christianity | Tagged | Leave a comment

Crazy for God

On Shack’s rec­om­men­da­tion, I read Crazy for God, by Frank(y) Scha­ef­fer. He was right–it was awesome. I read a Franky Scha­ef­fer book sev­eral years, when I was first get­ting back into poetry after col­lege. Addicted to Medi­oc­rity was about the way Amer­i­can Protes­tant sub­cul­ture had rel­e­gated the arts to the Chris­t­ian base­ment, as he put it, [...]
Also posted in literature | Leave a comment