Marshall McLuhan: Making Sense of Media
Soon televisions will be saturated with ads and “logically irreconcilable one-liners,” to quote Carl Henry. Many jaded voters will switch the station, but still endure the rhetoric until the post-election aftermath dissipates. Though our attitude toward politics often consists of disdain and distrust, perhaps we overlook the fact that our feelings aren’t based on direct experience, but on indirect, mediated information. Consider a...
Book Review: Killing Calvinism
Some books elicit interest due to their subject matter. Others do so because of their literary quality. For me, the title Killing Calvinism (Cruciform Press, 2012) was enough to arrest my attention. As a Baptist pastor with strong convictions about the doctrine of salvation, new books on theological systems frequently pique my interest. Regardless of our spiritual sensibilities about “systems,” we all tend to have them. Written by...
The Dangerous Powers of the E-Personality: An Interview with Elias Aboujaoude
In one of the earliest Christian sermons recorded in Scripture, Stephen states that “Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” (Acts 7:22). The early saints and apostles believed that Moses’ understanding of his culture was an important element of his ability to lead God’s people. The phrase “plunder the Egyptians,” found initially in Exodus 12:36b, has similarly gone on to forge a lasting impact on the way many...
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...
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