Mere Orthodoxy » Culture
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Mere Orthodoxy shares book reviews on culture, politics, and religion for those who love words. We are a small group of young Christians who have spent the past 15 years defending word count and nuance on the internet while working out what our faith looks like in public. Whether it is arts, movies, literature, politics, sexuality, or any other crevice of the human experience, we believe that..
Mere Orthodoxy » Culture
8h ago
David Bahnsen, Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life (New York: Post Hill Press). 208 pp. $24, cloth.
I sometimes tell people, when recommending that they read A Severe Mercy, that they should know the book presents as a love story but, in reality, it is actually a conversion story. If you understand that going in, your whole experience of the book will be better.
A similar comment might apply to David Bahnsen's Full Time: Work and the Meaning of Life. If you take the book to be a reflection on work, you're only getting part of the story. Really the book is a vindication of ..read more
Mere Orthodoxy » Culture
5d ago
In the Screwtape Letters, the senior tempter Screwtape admonishes Wormwood about the danger of tempting humans with pleasure. He tells his devilish understudy, “Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s ground. . . He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one.” C.S. Lewis’s imagined letters from Screwtape coaching Wormwood on how best to tempt an individual so that he will not fall into the hands of “the enemy” (i.e. Christ) communicate powerful insights int ..read more
Mere Orthodoxy » Culture
1w ago
Years ago, I visited an Anglican church while visiting some friends out of town. I had just started working as the children’s director at the Anglican church I attended back home, so in addition to attending worship with the adults that Sunday morning, I spent some time following the children around to see what I could see. The children at this particular church had the traditional classrooms with the tables and chairs, circle time rug, dress-up, etc ..read more
Mere Orthodoxy » Culture
1w ago
Sarah McCammon, The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church (New York: St. Martin's Press). 320 pp. $30.00 cloth.   ..read more
Mere Orthodoxy » Culture
1w ago
I.
One of my favorite scenes in the Coen brothers’ film The Big Lebowski is when Walter and the Dude walk across the bowling alley parking lot moments after Walter has threatened a competing bowler at gun point for stepping over the lane line. The Dude explains to Walter that Sparky is a pacifist and kind of fragile. Walter replies that he himself also dabbled with pacifism at one time. Seated in the vehicle Walter waves off the accusation as “water under the bridge” since their team is through to the round-robin anyway.
“Am I wrong?!”, asks Walter repeatedly.
“No, no, you’re not wrong, Walte ..read more
Mere Orthodoxy » Culture
2w ago
For a brief moment last week my home state was in the news ..read more
Mere Orthodoxy » Culture
2w ago
As depictions of contemporary moral reflection go, I doubt we'll find anything more accurate or chilling than the finale of The Good Place. To briefly summarize, the episode wraps up a several season run in which the protagonists start out in Hell, though they are led to believe they're in Heaven before earning their way into Heaven, as it were. The final episodes of the series take place in Paradise, showing how the characters adjust to their perfected place ..read more
Mere Orthodoxy » Culture
2w ago
Let our formulas find your soul. We’ll divine your artesian source (in your mind), marshal feed and force (our machines will) to design you a perfect love—or (better still) a perfect lust. O how glorious! Glorious! A brand-new need is born. Now we possess you! (You’ll own that. You’ll own that.) Now we possess you! (You’ll own that in time.) Now we will build you an endlessly upward world, reach in your pocket, embrace you for all you’re worth. Is that wrong? Isn’t this what you want? Amen.
-- Vienna Teng, The Hymn of Acxiom
The Library of Babel was first imagined as a short story by l ..read more
Mere Orthodoxy » Culture
3w ago
Should modern Christians fast? There’s a danger in talking about fasting, because the power of fasting and prayer is almost entirely in the doing, not in explanation, but in bodily participation. We do it, and then we tend to see what it’s for. But since so many Christians in our disembodied cultural moment have perhaps never fasted or never even considered why it might be a good thing for Christians to do, it might be worth saying a few things about it as a way of re-introducing a notion that, perhaps for many of our ancestors, would have needed no explanation at all ..read more
Mere Orthodoxy » Culture
3w ago
The moniker of “Christian Nationalism,” a term that is still being defined and debated in academic circles, is now a common subject in elite discourse. The term is regularly referred to by news outlets with little to no explanation, just an assumption that good people will oppose it. Members of Congress host documentaries about the subject made by big-time Hollywood producers. We should be wary of the use of this term. The concept of “Christian Nationalism” has questionable utility as an interpretive tool--it obscures and evades more than it elucidates--but what should be ..read more