By: Bill Dobrenen on September 5, 2014
My mother died this week. It happened suddenly and peacefully. Her cancer, which had spread from the lungs to the bones to the spine, finally won the battle. The passing was a difficult time for my father. He was mom’s caretaker for the past ten years as she had succumbed to alcohol-induced dementia a decade…
By: Julie Dodge on September 5, 2014
“…churches often appear imaginatively empty.”[i] Such a statement breaks my heart. As Christians, we worship God the Creator of everything that ever was and ever will be. We worship the God who his greater than our imaginations and broader than we can understand. He is without limit. His creativity is without end. God, who created…
By: Stefania Tarasut on September 5, 2014
I bought my first icon this year. It took me about thirty minutes to decide if buying this icon was a sin. It’s funny, but when you grow up with Orthodoxy in the background and the Protestant voice labeling icons as idol worship, you can’t help but pause and question what you’re about to do.…
By: Richard Volzke on September 5, 2014
William Dyrness’s book, Visual Faith: Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue[1], provides historical context to how art and Christianity have impacted one another over time. The early Catholic Church (before the Reformation) incorporated elaborate art and architecture into their places of worship and services. It was used to draw people into the worship experience. During…
By: Clint Baldwin on September 5, 2014
“It is possible that we might win the battle of words, but lose the battle of images. And losing that battle could well cost us this generation.”[1] I think Dyrness offers a vital point with this statement in noting that modes/methods that worked in the past will not necessarily work in the present. However, with…
By: John Woodward on September 4, 2014
Every time I travel to Europe, I take time to visit churches (which, amazingly, are kept open and accessible rather then locked-up like in the United States). Most of the churches I visit are Catholic or Orthodox, which provide s tsunami of sensory stimulation, from sight to smell, from sound to feel. Rich in images…
By: Mitch Arbelaez on September 4, 2014
As I am completing this assignment on Visual Faith, I am on assignment here on the tropical, Caribbean island of Puerto Rico. Yes, missions is a tough job, but someone has to do it. As I am “suffering for the Lord” in this beautiful three story hacienda located on the northern coast of the island…
By: Liz Linssen on September 4, 2014
I remember while working as a lecturer in a university in Seoul, talking to a fellow colleague, Mr. Kim. He was an art professor there and he showed me some of his personal work: sculptures of heads which were part pig, part human. I asked him why he created such art and he told me…
By: Deve Persad on September 4, 2014
From Miriam-Webster’s Dictionary: 1 an opening especially in the wall of a building for admission of light and air that is usually closed by casements or sashes containing transparent material (as glass) and capable of being opened and shut. 2 a means of entrance or access; a means of obtaining information. Adding a window to…
By: Ashley Goad on September 4, 2014
Growing up, I attended worship every Sunday at Springfield Friends Meeting in High Point, North Carolina. Quaker meeting houses are not known for their ornate decorations or visual art. In fact, this statement is included in our Book of Discipline, Faith and Practice: “Paintings, crosses, and stained glass are all outward symbols, or representations, of…
By: Clint Baldwin on July 16, 2014
Karl Polanyi first wrote The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time in 1944. Much has changed (understatement) since 1944; and yet… And yet, unfortunately, one of the things that has not changed is our need to still learn some of the lessons that Polanyi suggested were needed back in 1944 (Joseph…
By: Clint Baldwin on July 15, 2014
In the beginning…out of nothing…God created. We, created in the likeness of the Maker who makes all things, are ourselves world-makers. This is our birthright. There are those who still actively name this birthright and call us to living into its freedom, joy and responsibility. The Presbyterian Church USA works toward “renewing the church to…
By: Clint Baldwin on July 14, 2014
Murray Jardine leads us down a path that many have noted before, but he does a good job of it. Namely, our scientific and technological capabilities are outstripping our ability to morally process their implications before implementing them into our lives. Throughout his book, The Making and Unmaking of Technology Society: How Christianity Can Save…
By: Clint Baldwin on July 14, 2014
In case you haven’t noticed a significant amount of people think something is wrong with America. Now, it’s hard to believe that anyone really takes this idea seriously, because when you think about it, really think about it, what changes actually get made? Are there still uncharged inmates at Guantanamo? Do we still have the…
By: Clint Baldwin on July 14, 2014
In Making Room for Leadership: Power, Space and Influence, Mary Kate Morse does something amazing. She gets us outside of living inordinately inside our heads. That is, it’s not that we are overthinking things (though that can happen); instead, it’s that we have had a tendency to incorrectly be thinking about a lot of things. …
By: Clint Baldwin on July 14, 2014
This blog post is being driven from reading William T. Cavanaugh’s Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire and Vincent J. Miller’s Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture. However, I have recently written another blog post on a related reading dealing with economics, socio-political interaction and faith. I engaged Max Weber’s The…
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,…
