Church in Mission Immigration and May Day The May Marches are just about to take place and I just received an email with an image seeking to raise awareness around the complex social issues and injustices surrounding immigration in this country. There are a number of pictures by Shepard Fairey dealing with this issue of “Immigration Reform
Featured The Kingdom Call and Practice of Resistance I have been thinking a lot about “practices of resistance” lately, not just the theology and philosophy behind this but also how to incorporate them into my routines more. So over the next few posts I want to try and develop some thoughts around this as well as explain a
The Cultural Virtual Desire and a New York Police Officer There’s a really interesting article in the New York Times today about a police office who was being charged with brutality in a criminal case. The suspect was caught carrying a gun and was purportedly punched by the officer while he was in cuffs. The Times reports that, “Officer
Church in Mission Fan Culture and “Virtual” Communities I’ve written about Henry Jenkins in the past, he’s Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and writes constantly about fan culture or “fandom,” remix, and other contemporary cultural happenings. I didn’t know much about him until last year when my doctoral advisor recommended I read
The Cultural Elvis Perkins on Ash Wednesday Today is Ash Wednesday, it is the first day of Lent and one day we reflection on repentance, cleansing and the frailty of life all in preparation for Good Friday and the resurrection. I have some reflections that tie into Lent that I will post as time presents itself, but
Featured Guest Post: Matthew Hoopes’ Top 5 Albums of the Year Since he spends so much time immersed in music, I asked my good friend, and fellow Canton, Ohio native Matthew Hoopes of Relient K to share his top 5 Albums of 2008 with the gathering in light community. This is his first guest post here, and it’s a a
The Cultural You Are Not What You Buy (BND 2008) Looking for something interesting and provocative to take part in this Thanksgiving? Forget standing in a line outside of Walmart at 4 am on Black Friday, instead consider taking part in “Buy Nothing Day.” This is a two-day event put on by Adbusters every year to make the point that
The Cultural David Bazan Visits Fuller Seminary David Bazan graced Fuller Seminary with his presence this past Saturday, playing a sold-out show in what turned out to be a very intimate show in Fuller’s Travis Auditorium. I’ve been a fan of David Bazan’s music (aka Pedro the Lion and Headphones) since a friend of
Church in Mission The McCain-Palin Taste for The Secret We live in a culture of increasing secrecy. Despite claims of being the ‘age of information,’ one might goes so far as to say we live in a culture of ‘the secret.’ Not only has there been a flood of recent secular books all pointing to new secrets being discovered
The Cultural Zizek and Theology by Adam Kotsko Adam Kotsko’s recent book, iek and Theology, is a great addition to the growing library of commentaries, introductions and appropriations surrounding Slavoj iek‘s philosophical work. It was only recently published in the States by T & T clark and it comes in the series “Philosophy and
The Cultural Barth: The Original (Theology) Hipster? Ben Myers posted a quote from Karl Barth on Fashion the other day, where Barth considers fashion one of the lordless powers of our times: Who or what really determines fashion the fashion to which man thinks he must obediently subject clothes, headgear, and hairstyle, the alternation of assurance and
Green (Untitled) A friend sent this article by Wendell Berry the other day and said it was worth the read, he is right. The article looks at how our insatiable desire for more not only has adverse effects on our lives and economy but also on our environment. This limitlessness that’s
The Cultural Wittenburg Door on Mark Driscoll Most of you know about Mark Driscoll, he’s a mainstream pastor from Seattle with a church of about 6,000 people. He’s also infamous to many for being rather misogynistic, and focused on an overtly-testosterone reading of the Scriptures. The satire magazine Wittenburg Door has done an article
Featured Remixing Faith in the 21st Century (Barclay Press) I’ve posted my June essay on Barclay press if you care to have a read (it’s nice and long!). Here’s and excerpt: This past April Radiohead did another thing that sparked imaginations and challenged the preexisting structures of the music industry, yet again. They setup a website
Featured Boycotting Amazon (And Borders and B&N) [[Warning Containing Rant]] I’m joining Dan in his Amazon crusade (see here and here), which basically means, I’m not selling books on there (I pulled all my for sale books down today from their site), and I’m not buy books from there (unless maybe there’s the
The Cultural On Immodesty: Too Much Skin (At Church and Elsewhere)? My buddy Rhett’s written on a provocative topic, what do we do about immodesty in the church? This is pressing for him and I since we are both now father’s of beautiful little girls. He writes: No matter what we as parents do I know there will always
The Cultural Two (Possible) Roles of Religion In A Global World I’m currently writing a methods paper, laying out how I will conduct my field research among Quaker congregations. In the section where I’m dealing with culture and the role of the church I found Slavoj iek’s quote below to be insightful and to the point. The
The Cultural French Theory in America by Stanley Fish Here’s a great piece by literary critic Stanley Fish, over at his New York Times blog “Think Again,” who offers brief history in the coming to America of French Theory (and namely deconstruction). Here’s a couple quotes I like from the post: [In Bacon’s work] The mind
Featured Remixing In Rainbows (and the church) In the spirit of creativity and utilizing the web to foster fan-based participation, Radiohead has launched the website Radioheadremix.com and are inviting everyone to remix their latest single “Nude.” They’ve split the song up into five separate tracks and have made each available for sale so that you
Featured Looking Awry at Wes Anderson’s Darjeeling Limited This is an article that was published back in the fall in Fuller’s “newspaper” the SEMI (that issue of the paper can be downloaded via .pdf here). There are two reasons I am posting this now: first, I held off publishing it on gathering because I submitted it to
Featured The Newsies and the Kingdom of God? Ok, so I’m late to the game, yes, I just watched Newsies for the first time. Emily still can’t believe I just now saw it. All I can say is that in my home growing up, with four other brothers, musicals weren’t really something we willfully chose
Featured The Wire And Disrupting the Othering Process If you haven’t had the chance to watch HBO’s TV show The Wire I highly recommend you take the time and begin watching. It’s in its fifth and final season, so there’s plenty to keep your Netflix queue busy for quite awhile. While it may not
Featured Thoughts on pedagogy does technology in the classroom help or hurt A couple weeks back I had the great privilege to meet with some of the faculty and staff at the school where I attend, to discuss updating the classrooms on campus for better learning. The school was recently awarded a grant with this specific task in mind. One question raised