By: Clint Baldwin on July 14, 2014
The Rebel Sell: How the Counterculture Became Consumer Culture by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter is interesting. I offer that ambivalently. It’s interesting in some intriguing, thought-provoking ways and unfortunately it’s also interesting in some Orwellian, Huxleyan Brave New World kind of ways. One begins reading The Rebel Sell expecting some critique of failed countercultural…
By: Clint Baldwin on July 14, 2014
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber essentially needs no introduction. It is a classic in western culture and even more broadly known and referred to than this around the world. However, being a classic, it can be something of which people and to which they refer without ever having actually…
By: Clint Baldwin on July 14, 2014
Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s by D. W. Bebbington is – as the title suggests — a text about a historical exploration of Evangelicalism in modern Britain. However, it is also about much more than this. While Bebbington specifically reviews the socio-cultural aspects of Evangelicalism in Britain,…
By: Clint Baldwin on July 14, 2014
“Current evangelicalism in the US lacks an articulate political or social theory except for a generalized patriotism.”[1] So writes Max Stackhouse, long-serving emeritus professor at Princeton. Unfortunately – including beyond the scope of simply “evangelicalism” – much of the “theology” we see applied in the public sphere today is more bafoonery than it is articulate,…
By: Cedrick Valrie on July 6, 2014
Introduction History does not happen to God. God is timeless. No matter the century, movement, or memorable decade in world history, God is turning the pages of time at…
By: Stefania Tarasut on July 2, 2014
I walk away from Terry Eagleton’s book Culture and the Death of God with one thought, “The Almighty, has proved remarkably difficult to dispose of… Rumors of his death have been greatly exaggerated: he has now put himself back on the agenda…” (ix) I’m also reminded of the cliché and over used quote credited to…
By: Clint Baldwin on June 30, 2014
To summarize and render a text a fairly complete injustice — God’s hard to get rid of. There you go. Done. Point is that some of the greatest minds and cultural movements have tried really intriguing ways to get rid of God, but…no dice. That is, God might metamorphosize and/or lie dormant for a while,…
By: Miriam Mendez on June 29, 2014
For some weird reason there was a song stuck in my head as I began to read this book. The song was one that, as a young child, I remembered from Sunday Bible School: “God is not dead, he is still alive—I feel God in my feet (stomp, stomp), I feel God in my hands…
By: Mark Steele on June 28, 2014
In my college days, I considered myself a mountaineer. I had ample opportunity to climb mountains like Mt. Rainier, Mt. Baker and Mt. Whitney as well as climbing the cliffs of Yosemite Valley. What I liked about climbing is that it enabled me to get above the clouds and see the bigger beautiful picture of…
By: Richard Rhoads on June 28, 2014
It was March 1st, 1997. I had just said, “I do!” to Naomi, who was now my wife. It was an amazing day filled with family, loved ones and great friends. Just as special, was our next day walking to our terminal at the airport. See, being the hopeless romantic I decided to surprise my…
By: rhbaker275 on June 27, 2014
“Is ‘God Is Dead’ Dead?” I began my undergraduate studies in the mid-nineteen sixties. It was a time of turbulence and turmoil. President Lynden Johnson rapidly escalated the Vietnam War when he took office following the assassination of President John Kennedy. The social, political and economic upheaval and chaos were rooted in the expanding civil…
By: Richard Volzke on June 27, 2014
This week’s reading directly illustrated the fact that religion is being removed from culture across the globe. Eagleton begins by referencing a 2011 survey from Britain which concluded that, “61 per cent of the respondents claimed to have a religion, but only 29 per cent of them claimed to be religious.”[1] I’m not sure if…
By: Sandy Bils on June 27, 2014
Most storms are not produced by pressure, but more by de-pressure, a vacuum that draws and pumps masses of air. It’s not always the pushing force that produces a shift and motion, but sometimes also the lack or deficit. Some think, we live in times, were religion is more and more marginalized, up to a…
By: Mitch Arbelaez on June 27, 2014
The parable goes like this….“Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: “I seek God! I seek God!”—-As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got…
By: Julie Dodge on June 27, 2014
Last night I took myself out for a lovely Lebanese dinner while reading Terry Eagleton’s Culture and the Death of God.[i] A you ng family of four came in shortly after I, and was seated across from me. I couldn’t help but be enamored by them; the dad engaging consciously with his young son, while…
By: Telile Fikru Badecha on June 27, 2014
Culture and the Death of God by Eagleton Terry is interesting but admittedly I needed to read it a couple of times to digest his perspective. The author quotes and paraphrases a number of other intellectuals’ works which are perfectly relevant to his viewpoints and require his readers to be familiar with the sources he…
By: Sam Stephens on June 27, 2014
I have been receiving several malicious ‘hate tweets’ over the last few days in response to my last tweet about my time with leaders and church planters in eastern India and the fact that the church is multiplying there. The one received today I thought was interesting. It said that people in Pakistan, Afghanistan and…
By: Michael Badriaki on June 27, 2014
Terry Eagleton’ book titled “Culture and the death of God” picked my interested for particular reasons. From the onset, I was impressed by Eagleton’s evidently brilliant layout of the changing relationship in religious affairs, mythology and art during the enlightenment through modernity and in post modernity. During the course of reading Eagleton’s literature, I found…
By: Carol McLaughlin on June 27, 2014
First things first, I felt a lot like Marlin trying to understand the turtle in the movie Finding Nemo, “You’re cute, kid, but I can’t understand a thing you’re saying.” While I recognize the value and need for us to discuss and unpack the differing influences from the Enlightenment and the transition from modernity to…
By: Fred Fay on June 27, 2014
One of my favorite stories I have shared with children is about Martin the Cobbler. He is the central character in Leo Tolstoy’s classic called “Where Love Is”. Martin, because of some very difficult situations in his life, has denied God. But through a visit of a missionary and a dream he believes God will…
