Safety has become a very important concept in Christian entertainment. Pick up any Christian parenting magazine that talks about healthy entertainment for your kids, any online guide to what entertainment Christians should or shouldn't indulge in, and you'll find it can almost all be summed up as, "anything outside this very specific zone is unhealthy …
In the last few blog posts of my series on how evangelicals differ from high church Christians on entertainment, I’ve discussed several trends. I’ve talked about how suburban values inform evangelical institutions, how high church liturgy encourages a recognition of sin that evangelicals often miss, and other related ideas. Many of these ideas have been …
In a recent post about "kid-friendly entertainment," I pointed out that for a certain audience, "Christian art" and "family-friendly" automatically go together. You can also use the term "sentimental," or "inspirational" to describe that kind of art, which dominates faith-based films and Christian Romance novels. There are several reasons why "Christian" and "family-friendly" don't always …
Continue reading Sentimentality and Substance (Sidetrails 1)
I recently finished a 7-part series on why evangelical Christians have often struggled to create good art, compared to Christians who come from high church traditions (Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, etc.). I will discuss a few points (such as the need for art that captures "the thinginess of things") in more detail in "sidetrail" …
Continue reading Why Do High Churches Get All the Good Artists: Concluding Thoughts
The following is part of a series on American evangelicals, considering why American Christian artists who produce high quality work tend to Catholic, Anglican, Eastern Orthodox or other high church denominations. Several years ago, I was in a Christian college's creative writing class where everyone had to write a novella on a topic of their choice. Since …
I'm sitting now in my backyard, thinking about Frank Miller and 9/11. These aren't things many people would put together, but for graphic novel fans with a strong sense of the genre's history (or people interested in Marvel's Daredevil) they've intertwined in a way that shows how artists can be deeply affected by catastrophe, and …
Continue reading Frank Miller, 9/11 and the heroism question
The following is part of a series on American evangelicals, considering why American Christian artists who produce high quality work tend to Catholic, Anglican, Eastern Orthodox or other high church denominations. It’s been said so many times it’s almost passé, but evangelical entertainment isn’t known for deep treatments of spiritual problems. There are plenty of Christian Fiction …
Continue reading The Negative Way (Why Do High Churches Get All the Good Artists Pt 6)
The following is part of a series on American evangelicals, considering why American Christian artists who produce high quality work tend to Catholic, Anglican, Eastern Orthodox or other high church denominations. In a previous post, I argued that evangelical culture is essentially suburban, and averageness tends to be a central feature in suburban cultures. A related problem …
Continue reading The Importance of “Thinginess” (Why Do High Churches Get All the Good Artists Pt 5)
The following is part of a series on American evangelicals, considering why American Christian artists who produce high quality work tend to Catholic, Anglican, Eastern Orthodox or other high church denominations. W. Dale Brown argues in his introduction to Conversations with American Writers that there is a misconception that a good story involves pain. He …
Recently the ever-generous Brenton Dickieson published my essay about T.H. White on his blog, A Pilgrim in Narnia. In many ways, it was me considering ideas that Dickieson brought up in an insightful Tolkien vs. Lewis scholarship series, and expand some ideas I presented at Taylor University's C.S. Lewis Center back in 2017. Someone recently …
The following is part of a series on American evangelicals, considering why American Christian artists who produce high quality work tend to Catholic, Anglican, Eastern Orthodox or other high church denominations. “You need to remember this. The cat sat on the mat. That’s not a story. But the cat sat on a dog’s mat. Now …
Continue reading The Need for Problems (Why Do High Churches Get All the Good Artists Pt 3)
