Culture

Nearly a decade ago now, Lisa and I went to visit an art exhibit at a private gallery on Manhattan. I had recently become acquainted with the Japanese-American artist Makoto Fujimura, and I wanted to see his work for myself. The exhibition was called "Images of Grace," and we were dazzled to...

I have quite a collection of books on the arts from a Christian perspective, but I was so eager for Dr. Ryken's new book, that I have had it on backorder since last December. The subtitle of the book is A Call to Recover the Arts. In some ways it is frustrating that a book like this is necessary...

I do not have the space in this brief review to give a summary of the content of the whole of this remarkable book; rather I will mention just a couple of highlights. Last year I had the students in my Apologetics and Understanding Contemporary Culture class read Total Truth . Almost without...

This is a very difficult review to write. The difficulty first became apparent to me several months ago when I realized that I was enormously behind my intended deadline of October, 2005. Due to a variety of circumstances, I have been very late in getting this review completed, and the powers that...

By all accounts, Rob Bell, the founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Michigan, is a very "hip" guy. As Andy Crouch, a writer for Christianity Today remarked, "You could say he puts the 'hip' in discipleship."[1] Bell's recent book, Velvet Elvis, is a hip attempt to help...

At the risk of being labeled a musical snob, I venture a comment or two on one of the twentieth century's greatest composers, the centenary of whose birth we celebrate this year--Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 - 1975). He is to music what Alexander Solzhenitsyn is to Soviet literature. Finding early...

The last few weeks of international news have carried multiple reports of the rioting that has broken out across great swathes of the world as a response to the publication of apparently offensive cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed. I say `apparently' because none of the news media in the US...