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It’s a game, yes — and much more: a school for life, a cultic celebration. Football, I mean. It is what we are and what we will be. Passionate involvement with football begins for most American males in grade school; for a few, it culminates in playing with the National Football League; for most, it …
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In a study of “the forgotten virtues of community” journalist Alan Ehrenhalt looks at three Chicago-area cornmunities between the 1950s and the 1990s: a Catholic parish in the city, an African-American section of the South Side, and the suburb of Elmhurst. The thesis of his book, The Lost City, is that three major shifts in …
Continue reading “Changes in Attitude: the Lost World of the 1950s”
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Abortion clinics are firebombed; Planned Parenthood workers are murdered; an art gallery owner is arrested for exhibiting Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs; a rap group is arrested on obscenity charges; the civil rights — or “special privileges” — of gays and lesbians are the subject of controversial referenda; and issues of multiculturahsm, freedom of expression and “political …
Continue reading “Is America In A Culture A War? Yes — No — Sort Of”
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BOOK REVIEWS: >Youth Leadership: A Guide to Understanding Leadership Development in Adolescents, by Josephine A. Long and Carl I. Fertman. Jossey Bass, 243 pp, $25.00 Cold New World: Growing Up in a Harder Country, by William Finnegan. Random House, 481 pp., $26.00. Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X, By Tom Beaudoin. Jossey …
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Here we are on the eve of one of our odder hallowed days. On the second Sunday in May, churches across the country will again honor mothers. Some churches will recognize the oldest mother and, if not a matter of scandal, the youngest or most recent mother. Perhaps, too, congregations will applaud the mother with …
Continue reading “Piety, Commercialism, Activism: The Uses of Mother’s Day”
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Sometime this month over one million American young men will place sixty cents on a counter somewhere and walk away with a copy of Playboy, one of the most spectacular successes in the entire history of American journalism. When one remembers that every copy will probably be seen by several other people in college dormitories …
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Pass it on. Dan Wakefield is one of us. His autobiography Returning: A Spiritual Journey gave it away, but secular critics, always nervous with anything that smacks of the "spiritual," prefer to think of Wakefield as either an evocative novelist with a special talent for describing the struggles of a midwestern kid who made it …
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In an effort to make sense of the presidential campaign, I turned to journalist James Reston’s recent autobiography, Deadline, thinking that his insights into earlier campaigns might put the 1992 race into perspective. What I found was not horse-race data about the past but a definition of wisdom taken from Alfred North Whitehead. "It is …
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From its initial announcement, the Peters Projection has been surrounded by controversy: in over 40 articles on the subject, cartographers have vigorously denounced a number of Peters’s claims for the map, while he and his supporters have argued that his is the only world map that meets the concerns of people interested in social issues. …
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Biblical scholars have long debated the historical reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Though there was not that much new to report on the topic, the three major news-magazines decided anyway to feature Jesus on their Easter week cover and report on recent arguments about whether Jesus actually said what the New Testament says …
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1. Background Perspectives 1. One of the most influential factors in cultural understanding and organisation is the communication patterns within that culture. The technological, social and power characteristics of the dominant media of communication in a society will have a strong influence on how the society organises, interacts & thinks about itself. 2. Different …
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In science fiction films and novels cyborgs are technological golems that haunt dystopic and utopic chimerical worlds. Futuristic fabrications, cyborgs in this subgenre of the arts are imaginative admixtures of humans and machines that mimic human life but remain outside it. The replicants of “Blade Runner,” the T800 of “The Terminator,” Data in Star …
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Matthew Arnold, the 19th-century British poet and critic, aimed, in Morris Dickstein’s words, "to direct a free play of thought onto subjects that had become petrified by received opinion." Arnold believed that the critic should, in his memorable phrase, see life steadily and see it whole. Indeed, for Arnold, the welfare of the nation depended …
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Elie Wiesel says that the hardest part of writing a novel is getting the first sentence right. Once that is accomplished, the rest falls into place. Here’s the first sentence of The Forgotten: “The shock was so violent that he lost his balance and almost fell to the damp soil; the name on the tombstone, …
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Richard D. Heffner recently examined the explosive response to Oliver Stone’s movie JFK and concluded that what really disturbs Stone’s critics is that he represents a new and powerful kind of historian, one who is "fully determined to have his own way with the pictures inside our heads." Stone’s "mind-boggling special effects, his rapid cuts …
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Theology and myth are stepsisters of truth. The one probes with questions, the other spins out tales on gossamer threads. But both serve a common mystery. I was reminded of this recently in reading Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyer’s conversation on The Power of Myth. This wonderful book is filled with pictures of Tibetan and …
Continue reading “The Power of Myth: Lessons from Joseph Campbell”
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If it is true, as G. K. Chesterton said, that the U.S. is a nation with the soul of a church, then why is it so difficult to use explicit religious references in public discourse? That question was at the center of a recent conference at which more than 200 people assembled under the auspices …
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Of all the charges that Brendan Gill lodged in the New York Review of Books (September 28, 1989) against the heretofore sacrosanct Joseph Campbell, the most stinging was not that Campbell was either an anti-Semite or a political reactionary but that his work appeals to guilt-ridden yuppies seeking a rationalization for their materialistic narcissism. Campbell’s …
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When the Dallas Cowboys are at the top of their game, winning routinely and decisively, one of the favorite quips which circulates in north Texas concerns Arlington Stadium, where the Cowboys play their home games. The stadium has a partial roof which covers much of the stands but none of the playing field. Cowboy fans …
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Two years ago I wrote a piece analyzing professional football. I argued that this great national sport, which claims the devotion of a significant percentage of our population, mirrors in a ritual way some of the worst characteristics of our culture. In particular, I insisted, it interlinks four qualities that drive the American violence machine: …
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The younger of our brilliant, honors-division daughters returned from her university at Christmastime with a big, red, raw blister on the palm of her right band. In the solicitous manner of fathers, I demanded to know what had happened to her. She muttered something about some man. “What?” I cried. “A man did this to …
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William H. Willimon seems to be everywhere. When he is not preaching or teaching at Duke University, he is publishing books and articles on preaching, exegesis, ministry and the church, and he regularly gives lectures and leads conferences. I encountered Willimon at a workshop for Episcopal clergy on preaching. In an opening homily, Willimon cited …
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Twice during this summer’s joint congressional hearings on the Iran-Contra affair, Senator Paul S. Sarbanes (D., Md.) used the words of Justice Louis Brandeis, particularly in connection with the testimony of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North. The words are engraved in the Capitol Building itself: "The Greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men …
Continue reading “Zeal Without Understanding: Reflections on Rambo and Oliver North”
