Improv and the Yes/And of Loving People Well
Christ and Pop Culture
by Jeannie Whitlock
3d ago
Outside, it’s a weirdly warm February night on Chicago’s Fremont Street as lightning shatters the dark and wind howls through the skyscrapers. Inside, however, a ragtag jailhouse Shakespeare production is all that matters. A little blond woman in a green tank top hitches her pants up a bit higher and struts to the center of the stage. “Step right up if you wanna audition,” she barks. A young man with a ’fro and sweet brown eyes raises his hand, pleading, “I don’t want to be Puck again.” “You’re gonna be Puck, Karl!” another woman shouts. An older guy runs across the lineup to end the scene, an ..read more
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Is a Religious Life a Wasted Life?
Christ and Pop Culture
by Ryan Ragozine
6d ago
The Way of Holiness and the Way of Hedonism Holiness and happiness, purity and pleasure, benevolence and blessedness, virtue and vivaciousness, faithfulness and fulfillment, character and contentment: what do these seemingly contradictory concepts have in common? What do these ideas—often pitted against each other as mutually exclusive—have to do with one another? Is this some kind of paradox?   There are some Wesleyan principles that I will take with me wherever I go, and one of these is the idea that holiness is the way to happiness. Believe it or not, the idea that the moral life is ..read more
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The Discordant Heroism of Maestro
Christ and Pop Culture
by Micah Rickard
1w ago
There’s a moment in Bradley Cooper’s Maestro when Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein is hit with the weight of his choices. As he walks beside a park with an ex-lover, the distance between his former affections and the constraints of his current life tears him in two. He slows to a stop on the sidewalk until his friend realizes Bernstein’s pain and walks back to him, kissing him on the forehead.  Cooper’s biopic of the legendary American composer and conductor weaves around his musical triumphs and focuses instead on his relationships. It would seem that Bernstein is mourning this lost love—a l ..read more
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Blue Like Jazz and the Evolving Ethos of Ethan Hawke
Christ and Pop Culture
by Tynan Yanaga
3w ago
[Ethan Hawke] belies the first impressions from his earliest roles and has mostly eclipsed the image Miller is frustrated with.  In 2023 I finally read Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller, twenty years after it was originally published. It felt like his version of a Jack Kerouac stream-of-consciousness memoir, albeit framed through the lens of “nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality.” As such, it provides a snapshot of a very specific period in Christian culture, introducing characters like Mark Driscoll and Joshua Harris while highlighting Ravi Zacharias’s writings. We view each o ..read more
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Dancing in the Dark: Finding Flickers of Meaning in Pop Music Nihilism
Christ and Pop Culture
by Jason Morehead
3w ago
How is it that a catchy melody, solid groove, or infectious hook can make you want to dance to even the darkest and most nihilistic of thoughts? Prince’s “1999” is a certified banger that just so happens to be set on the edge of nuclear armageddon. “Everybody’s got a bomb / We could all die any day,” he sings. Nevertheless, he’s still going to dance his life away with the help of some funky guitar licks. Modern English’s “I Melt With You” is one of the best-known new wave hits from the ‘80s, so much so that it once appeared in a Burger King commercial. According to singer Robbie Grey, however ..read more
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Redeeming Love Does a Disservice to Hosea and to Women
Christ and Pop Culture
by Teagan Cooper
1M ago
Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers for the film Redeeming Love. As a young woman, growing up in an early 2000’s Christian home, I heard the praises of Francine Rivers’ 1997 novel, Redeeming Love. I was even given a copy of the book for my fifteenth birthday. The excitement surrounding its feature film adaptation was palpable in Christian women’s small groups. The book is entertaining and a wonderful romance story, to be sure. God didn’t instruct Hosea to marry an actual prostitute, but simply to marry an Israelite woman.  As a teen, growing up in the “I’m not single, I’m ..read more
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The Beautiful Community and Brutal Scapegoating in The Peasants
Christ and Pop Culture
by Alisa Ruddell
1M ago
Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers for the film The Peasants. “Love comes and goes, but land stays.” It’s not exactly the kind of advice a girl expects from her mother on her wedding day. But this is late 19th-century Poland and we’re in a traditional agrarian village where farmland is coveted and marriages are brokered; where men and women till the soil and provide grist for the gossip mill in equal measure; where peasants drink vodka like it’s water, work themselves to the bone, and dance together till dawn; where the cycle of the seasons and the liturgy of the Catholic Church bin ..read more
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St. Augustine’s Disordered Loves and The Iron Claw
Christ and Pop Culture
by Natalie Bassie
1M ago
Behind the dimly lit arena, past the gold-plated championship belt hoisted in the air, and further, beyond the success of a prominent professional wrestling family, lies tragedy, trauma, and a possible curse. Such is the story in A24’s The Iron Claw (2023), which explores the saga of the Von Erich family. Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, the Von Erich men were at the top of the professional wrestling world, due in large part to their ever-so-disciplined father, Fritz Von Erich, who held the AWA World Heavyweight Championship in the early ’60s. As time goes on, and the popularity of professional w ..read more
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The Iron Claw and the Grip of Generational Sin
Christ and Pop Culture
by Steve Woodworth
1M ago
In a recent interview, New York Times columnist David Brooks shared a simple question that he sometimes pulls out at dinner parties: “How do your ancestors show up in your life?” I have thought about that question dozens of times since hearing it. I thought about it as I sat across from a young man picking up the pieces of his failed marriage and when I was counseling a new mother trying to heal her childhood wounds of abuse and abandonment. It has been on my mind frequently while meeting with alcoholics, unfaithful spouses, and people who hate the church. And it is at the forefront of my mind ..read more
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Faith as Drama: God and the Individual in The Passion of Joan of Arc
Christ and Pop Culture
by Patrick Galvan
1M ago
Although faith and religion have frequently inspired cinematic escapism, relatively few movies manage mass appeal while capturing the essence of Christianity: the individual’s relationship with God. Films in the “Christian entertainment” genre score limited audiences due to low budgets and well-intentioned yet sanctimonious storytelling. By contrast, populist entertainments based on biblical stories—such as Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 The Ten Commandments and his more famous 1956 remake—have become classics largely due to showmanship: the emphasis on huge sets, casts of thousands, and grandiose sp ..read more
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