Is there an appropriate place for icons in the 21st Century Protestant Church? There’s nothing new about the debate regarding sacred images and iconography, but I’ve gained some recent insights on the subject. In chapter 13 of Diarmaid McCullough’s work, Christianity: […]
In our time, politics and culture are increasingly oriented to the national scale on the one hand, and the immediate neighborhood on the other. A book, The Increasingly United States, by Daniel J. Hopkins, highlights this. However, in my view, besides […]
A few years ago I did a post on how country music seemed to have a Southern bias. Well, Donald Federikovich Trump owes his victory to the northern counterpart of rednecks, whatever they are called, that won him the states […]
In recent years one would get the impression that both poetry and classical music have declined in popularity except in rather esoteric “hip” circles; at least the newer kinds of poetry and classical music being written are not, for the […]
I spent a few days in Jackson, Mississippi, last fall, and for the interest of the thing had a country music station on in my car, because you never know. It turned out a large number of the songs were […]
A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our readers. As usual, what Americans call ‘The Holidays’ is an odd mix, especially in the special music now played. What are effectively Gospel carols [especially if they sing all […]
I write this, and the previous post, from London. One of the newer features of the city, finished in 2000 [opened for two days, shut down for repairs, and reopened in 2002], is a pedestrian bridge called Millennium Bridge. It […]
I think I must have read, somewhere before 1995, that arts institutions were taking the place of religious institutions among the upper classes of this country. But it did not stick with me until an important epiphany I had in […]
In eighteenth century Europe, one of the favorite intellectual debates was the Debate of the Ancients and the Moderns, whether Europe had now exceeded the greatness of the Greco-Roman era or had not yet done so. There is a similar […]
If a picture beats a thousand words, how come so many art commenters can get two thousand words out of every picture?