Funny how we fight over the speculative.
The opening of the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky (not far from the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky airport) is going to include a protest by a group calling itself DefCon. That's not a cold war-era relic group. It's a group of people who claim that what's going on inside this little museum is really scary for the rest of us thinking people (Check out a Kentucky version of the story at www.kentucky.com/181/story/78875.html, but don't miss the New York Times' version of it last week.)
What's at stake is the right to believe.
Ken Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis — the non-profit group that built the museum, notes the irony of those who attack what's in his museum under the notion that it's a threat to popular conceptions of pre-historic life on this planet.
The museum is getting it wrong, says Lawrence Krauss, a faculty member in physics and astronomy at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. In an interview with the Lexington Herald-Leader, Krauss said DefCon, which he's part of, fears that impressionable young people will come out of this museum and need re-education.
Last I heard the jury was still out on what the national curriculum should be on anything in this country — including the origins of human or any other life.
Fact is, scientists begin their research with hypotheses that — though based on some elements of fact — are essentially faith premises. If they're intellectually honest, they admit this and approach their research (and that of others doing inquiry in their field) with humility. They're ready to admit that their results are flawed and trace those flaws all the way back to their hypotheses, if necessary.
Ken Ham and those in his group have built a sanctuary for their point of view as to how life began on the earth. The basis for their scientifict scrutiny — and before Krauss and his group dismiss it as unscientific they're obliged to ask honest questions — happens to be a predisposition that forces beyond human reason or established empirical evidence were behind it all.
To shut Ken Ham and his group down smacks of the kind of treatment Galileo faced long ago when he dared ask questions that stepped outside the bounds of established thought.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
music and media
We did it.
The issue that nobody is talking much about — at least not directly — finally slid under the spotlight in Southern California a few weeks ago.
The issue is whether Christian artists, to really make it professionally, have to shed their Christian label and become "mainstream."
The discussion happend at Biola University.
Don't look for that school's name in the Chronicle of Higher Education unless you're looking for sardonic humor. American higher education generally looks at schools like Biola with arched eyebrows and a veiled grin — maybe a chortle.
But it's a school that matters in the grand scheme of a Christian subculture within the United States. It's also a school that takes seriously its interaction with popular culture. Nestled in the lower end of Los Angeles County and within an easy drive's distance from Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm and some fairly serious surfing, this campus is a place where students come for a Bible-based education from faculty who play Peter, Paul and Mary during exams and dissect films like "Pulp Fiction" for glimmers of God's face.
The event where the music conversation happened was the 2007 Biola Journalism Conference. An event organized by Biola Public Relations students and aimed at the entire campus of about 5,300 students.
During the two-day event, speakers from Entertainment Weekly, the Chicago Tribune, and promotions agencies across the Los Angeles region talked about the ways Christian music has moved from Jesus Freak stuff in the 1970s to a YouTube, MySpace, touring band phenomenon that packs out stadiums and has created a new breed of 21st century circuit-riding preachers.
So is Christian music dead? No. Is it derivative stuff? Some of it, yes. Is this Christian vs. non-Christian controversy new? Not really. There's been conflict for centuries between artists who were Christians over the real motivation for their work and its meaning(s). Christians who write really innovative stuff and play it with artistry that knocks the socks off anyone else are scattered all across the world and don't all show up in the music racks at Christian book stores. Some have never been to the Gospel Music Association Awards — or even know what it is.
What was worth looking at in this conference was the "emperor has no clothes" analysis of the contemporary Christian music franchise.
Chritian song writer and author John Fischer, lead speaker in the event, thundered at the gathered crowds about how Christians have made an adjective out of what should be a noun. Christian music is like other Christian stuff — a commodity bought and sold inside the safe walls of the castle we know as evangelical Christian culture. It's a castle with its own language and slang, its own clothing (even a dress code), its own books, films, kiddy toys, knick-knacks, jewelry, greeting cards, car and home keys, even home furnishings.
It's a multi-million dollar industry.
And the ugly little question that this conference raised is whether all that is a good idea and how Christians studying journalism and public relations should be thinking about it all.
The conference ended with questions rather than firm answers. And that's not a bad thing.
The issue that nobody is talking much about — at least not directly — finally slid under the spotlight in Southern California a few weeks ago.
The issue is whether Christian artists, to really make it professionally, have to shed their Christian label and become "mainstream."
The discussion happend at Biola University.
Don't look for that school's name in the Chronicle of Higher Education unless you're looking for sardonic humor. American higher education generally looks at schools like Biola with arched eyebrows and a veiled grin — maybe a chortle.
But it's a school that matters in the grand scheme of a Christian subculture within the United States. It's also a school that takes seriously its interaction with popular culture. Nestled in the lower end of Los Angeles County and within an easy drive's distance from Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm and some fairly serious surfing, this campus is a place where students come for a Bible-based education from faculty who play Peter, Paul and Mary during exams and dissect films like "Pulp Fiction" for glimmers of God's face.
The event where the music conversation happened was the 2007 Biola Journalism Conference. An event organized by Biola Public Relations students and aimed at the entire campus of about 5,300 students.
During the two-day event, speakers from Entertainment Weekly, the Chicago Tribune, and promotions agencies across the Los Angeles region talked about the ways Christian music has moved from Jesus Freak stuff in the 1970s to a YouTube, MySpace, touring band phenomenon that packs out stadiums and has created a new breed of 21st century circuit-riding preachers.
So is Christian music dead? No. Is it derivative stuff? Some of it, yes. Is this Christian vs. non-Christian controversy new? Not really. There's been conflict for centuries between artists who were Christians over the real motivation for their work and its meaning(s). Christians who write really innovative stuff and play it with artistry that knocks the socks off anyone else are scattered all across the world and don't all show up in the music racks at Christian book stores. Some have never been to the Gospel Music Association Awards — or even know what it is.
What was worth looking at in this conference was the "emperor has no clothes" analysis of the contemporary Christian music franchise.
Chritian song writer and author John Fischer, lead speaker in the event, thundered at the gathered crowds about how Christians have made an adjective out of what should be a noun. Christian music is like other Christian stuff — a commodity bought and sold inside the safe walls of the castle we know as evangelical Christian culture. It's a castle with its own language and slang, its own clothing (even a dress code), its own books, films, kiddy toys, knick-knacks, jewelry, greeting cards, car and home keys, even home furnishings.
It's a multi-million dollar industry.
And the ugly little question that this conference raised is whether all that is a good idea and how Christians studying journalism and public relations should be thinking about it all.
The conference ended with questions rather than firm answers. And that's not a bad thing.
Monday, May 07, 2007
The New Journalism?
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Death and the fear of it brings us together. Terror has a way of opening doors that had been closed in the humdrum routine of life togehter.
Perhaps the only thing worse than the threat of violent death is misinformation about its possibility. So when students at Virginia Tech, in fear of what early seemed to be multiple attackers on their campus, were confined, terrified and alone despite being together, they reached out. They used their phones, email, and their Facebook and Myspace pages. Are we surprised by this? We shouldn't be. It's not the tools that are important. It's what people were saying to each other.
Is what we saw happening between those students journalism? I don't think so. Was it communication? Of course. Will the journalism in the coming decades combine what we saw on that campus? Most definitely.
Death and the fear of it brings us together. Terror has a way of opening doors that had been closed in the humdrum routine of life togehter.
Perhaps the only thing worse than the threat of violent death is misinformation about its possibility. So when students at Virginia Tech, in fear of what early seemed to be multiple attackers on their campus, were confined, terrified and alone despite being together, they reached out. They used their phones, email, and their Facebook and Myspace pages. Are we surprised by this? We shouldn't be. It's not the tools that are important. It's what people were saying to each other.
Is what we saw happening between those students journalism? I don't think so. Was it communication? Of course. Will the journalism in the coming decades combine what we saw on that campus? Most definitely.
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