Bach's Sacred Artistry

Depending on who you talk to, Bach, Beethoven, or Mozart is the greatest classical composer in history. Unlike the other two, Bach spent a significant amount of his life in obscurity, yet signed every piece "To the glory of God alone!"

In the New Yorker, Alex Ross writes an incisive review of Bach's output, evaluated through the recordings of two contemporary conductors. You don't have to love classical music to understand the imprint Bach put on the world--be they Christian or atheist. Ross puts that into perspective:

More than half of the sacred cantatas were written between 1723 and 1726, when Bach was in the early years of his long, and often unrewarding, appointment as the cantor of the Thomaskirche, in Leipzig. For extended stretches of the liturgical year, he produced one cantata a week, and for the most part he refused to take the easy path of reworking older pieces, whether his own or others’. Instead, in what seems a kind of creative rage, he experimented with every aspect of the cantata form, which traditionally served as a musical meditation on the Scriptural readings of the week. There are intimidating fugal choruses, sublimely extended operatic arias, frenzied instrumental interludes, weird chords galore, episodes of almost irreverent dancing merriment. To hear the entire corpus is to be buffeted by the restless energy of Bach’s imagination.

Bach's a perfect example of what any Christian trying to use their talents in the arts for God's glory should aspire to achieve.

Top 20 Literate US Cities

Amazon released an interesting list of the Top 20 Literate Cities in America.

The Top 5 are University cities, but after that it gets interesting, with major metro areas stealing the spots - though not as major as you might think. It's a fresh way to evaluate our country, that's for sure!

Snapshot of our TImes: Apple Trumps Google

Every year the most valuable brands in the world are re-evaluated and ranked. This year, Apple overtakes Google (no surprise there), but you might be surprised how high IBM still is (does anyone even talk about IBM anymore?).

And why has Coca-Cola dropped so much (it used to be the undisputed No. 1), while McDonald's keeps climbing. It's a great list to mull over because it's about how our world is interacting today.

Burning Churches in Egypt

The New York Review of Books offers a fascinating article on why Muslims are burning Coptic churches in Egypt.

The comments below are equally interesting, with some claiming the article tried too hard to achieve balance in a situation where there is no balance--this is outright persecution.

When the Levee (Doesn't) Break

Have you seen the UK's Daily Mail fantastic pictorial on the people in Mississippi who built their own levees around their houses? Good old American "Can do" if you ask me!

Some of these pix are amazing!

NBA Final Four Observations

Momo adds his usual great insight into sports, this time it's the NBA Final Four.

Go visit our sister blog if you haven't yet!

Jews and Hindus Make More Money

Who's doing well in this so-called economic downturn? The Jews and the Hindus, if you trust the numbers collected by the folks at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Who's faring the worst? The Pentecostals, who else? I just love being put in a box and aggregated. Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses and Baptists are among those with the lowest average income, and Reformed Jews, Conservative Jews and Hindus rank among the highest.

And it all ties strongly to education.

Newspapers Still Exist!

Poynter shares the U.S. newspapers with the highest circulation. Only 2 daily's exceed 1 million subscribers, and only 1 Sunday paper breaks the 1 million mark.

Just because they're down doesn't mean they're out.

Yet Another Response to the Assassination of Osama bin Laden

Whew, I'm glad that's over. That, and sadness. There's also an "I'm glad he's dead" response in there somewhere, but my initial response was a bit more muted than the majority of those celebrating the death of the United States' enemy number one. I was mostly sad for the loss of life.

Please don't misunderstand me, or otherwise judge me as un-American. I grieved and I still grieve for those who died in the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 (except for the nineteen terrorists). My heart is still rent by the trauma of the events of that fateful day that changed everything. And I did crave and I still crave revenge on the perpetrators and proponents of an ideology that teaches hatred. And I believe we're doing good with our continued efforts to thwart global terrorism in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, etc.

The photo above is from an excellent distraction from the grisly details of bin Laden's demise, one photojournalist's tour of the very same suburb where the U.S. forces found and dispatched our hated nemesis.

I'm not merely sad because Osama bin Laden didn't have a chance to convert to Christianity before he was assassinated. I'm sad that we killed him. I'm sad that he wasn't brought to trial and found guilty and executed according to our system of jurisprudence. I'm sad that 9/11 changed our view of the rules of warfare. I don't know that I can say I believe it's okay to assassinate your enemy. Go into his house and shoot up the place. Bomb them from unmanned drones in the sky by some guy on the ground with a joystick indiscriminately killing women and children. And yet we had to do something after 9/11. We had to quench our bloodlust, our thirst for revenge. And that makes me sad.

Jesus said, "Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Do good to them that hate you." And Paul also wrote, "it is written, vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."

Bin Laden Attack Tweeted

Super secret mission to kill the world's most wanted man? Yep, it was Tweeted.

This to me, tells us as much about how the world is being remolded as anything. Turns out the Bin Laden neighbor didn't quite realize what he was tweeting in full, but that hardly matters. The world's best spy networks were unaware of the attack, but Twitter followers were getting regular updates.

What a strange little world we live in now.

Pentecostal Couple Married 77 Years!

According to Ray and Lillie Agnew, both prominent in the UPCI's Harvestime Radio Ministry back in the day, it takes God and determination.

And they just survived the tornadoes in Missouri. (Check out the board stuck through their bedroom wall.)

Watch it all here.

Viral Hit: How Great Thou Art

Looks like country star Carrie Underwood has a surprise viral video hit (over 1.5m views since last Friday) with . . . "How Great Thou Art"!

Not to nitpick, but she's obviously out of synch with the music as it starts, but nails it at the end in a big way.

Personally, it's great to see another classic hymn proclaiming Christ making a grand reappearance on the internet! Encore! Encore!

Advertising in 2011: Fanta Anyone?

Got a low-selling brand you must promote without a serious budget? You could always go the fun, viral route!

Great Quote: Images Will Change the World

“When a religion aggressively proselytizes and seeks to transform the world, its most important resource is its images. It is image that transforms the imagination, and it is imagination that engenders a lifestyle. And what globalization does better than anything else is transform the imagination. That is why the entertainment and advertising industries are the first wave of the emerging global consciousness.”

Brian Walsh & Sylvia Keesmaat, Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire

I don't see how this quote diminishes the calling of writing (or any of the other arts we often cover in sister blog Word), as writing is about using words to create powerful images (via metaphor and otherwise) in the mind.

This quote is more about a healthy use of the arts to reach others.

Good Friday: Is It Special?

I'm curious how special we treat Palm Sunday and Good Friday in our Pentecostal churches. On this, our Holy Week, I wonder if your church makes a special effort to recognize it as "holy" with any special efforts besides presentations on Easter itself...

Maybe I'm wrong, but my observations indicate we do very little across our community to indicate its uniqueness to humanity. Any thoughts?

Nazi Germany used as trump card in argument for 823rd time this month. Sadly, it still works.

Today's link takes us to an article about the need for America to keep the Bible at it's heart if it wants to continue to thrive.

Now, I, as the person who is very much for the separation of church and state instinctively did not like the article as it chastised Libya's revolution for trying to seek freedom through "the barrel of a gun" but praised America's existence for being founded with a spiritual dimension and a Biblical ethic at it's core. The contradiction here being that America would not exist without the that same barrel of a gun that defended our cessation from England in the Revolutionary War.

But yet with the many historical inconsistencies and narrow arguments alluded to by the author, I couldn't just shrug this article off as just another piece of conservative propaganda (just as much as "liberal" propaganda will hit us over the head with the need to "go green"). In fact as I sat in front of my computer after reading the article, I realized I was feeling some remorse with a slight tinge of bitterness and a whole ton of frustration. The problem was that I couldn't figure out why this article in particular struck me so raw.

And then I realized what it was.... my frustration wasn't with the article as a whole (because it's just silly), but rather with one line.... and I quote

Forget the Bible and America will go the way of the first Protestant nation – Nazi Germany.

That's it.... That one line used by the author irked me to no end. Why? Because it had nothing to do with the article. Nazi Germany is not brought up before this sentence nor at any point after. If you read the whole article, there is nothing the author offers as to explain the logic of this sentence, nor is the logic apparent in the sentences preceding the sentence.

The dude just used Nazi Germany because he knows it will shock us. He knows that the Nazi's are one of the hardest things for us to swallow....He is using the tragedy of at least 6 million Jews to validate his argument even though the Bible has nothing to do with Nazi Germany. I theoretically have more of a claim to use the Nazi trump card because I had actual relatives who died in it, but I'm not that kind of an idiot. Simply because I know I can't relate to what happened to my relatives. It's a world beyond me. Everytime I find myself at a Holocaust Memorial either here in Michigan, in D.C. or in Jerusalem, I find myself speechless because nothing I can say or even think could calculate in a justifiable manner what happened in the Holocaust. Yet Vishal Mangalwadi whoever he is, feels the need to display the worst kind of irreverence to the tragedy of the Holocaust as to compare a Bibleless society as that of Nazi German because he knows that if we make the bad guy out to be Nazi Germany, the other side of the argument is going to look like a saint.


However, many Christians and ministers who even went to church and avidly read the Bible were Nazi's. Nor did Nazi Germany ban Bibles in any manner from being read within the country. But I have yet to read an atheist say "if we don't get rid of the Bible now, we will end up like Nazi Germany." Because to make such an allusion is asinine.

And it's not just the author of the article that has written such nonsense. I the Nazi/Holocaust allusion as a trump card all the time from Christians, Jews, Liberals, Atheists, Conservatives, etc.... and all the Holocaust and Nazi Germany is invoked for is simply as a tool to win an argument. But the problem becomes especially difficult when someone invokes Nazi Germany without giving any logical reason why.....

(Here is where I openly and hypocritically attempted a psychoanalytical logical argument ascribing that his treatment of non-Biblical nations is much closer to reflecting the ideology of Nazi Germany than a non-Biblical nation reflects Nazi Germany, but I will refrain because I realize anything that comes out from this point on is pure, 84 year old man crankiness)...

Food for Thought: Feeling vs. Obeying

"...in the biblical narrative God never seems concerned with how anyone feels, only with whether they go or don't go, whether they say no or yes." -Judith Rock, from "Inherited but Never Inhabited" in Image, No. 68

Food for Thought: Relationship with God

"It turns out that it's pretty easy to have a 'relationship' with God when he isn't personally showing up, asking you to do things." -Screenwriter Erich Hoeber, on his new comics project, The Mission.

On the goings and doings of a nation gone skeptical

"

Last week I went to a meeting titled "Heretics Bible Study Group." It's a monthly Bible Study group in which the attendees critically discuss various aspects of the Bible. Most of the members are atheists. All are skeptics. I was the only believer (but supposedly there is one other believer who frequents the group).

My mother and father were horrified that I went and thought they were witnessing my demise into atheistic doom. I am sure my mother even prayed for me. She may have even used rosary beads even though she has never been Catholic.

A few of the people who knew I had attended always asked the first question something along the lines of "did it ever get scary?"


And my initial response is always to giggle.

Because the way I think most Christians think about atheists is that they somehow have a "secret code" to prove the non-existence of God. So when I am asked if the meeting every got "scary," they really mean "did they ever tell you the secret code to get you to stop believing in God?"

I can easily tell them "no, i was never scared." But I feel that would mislead. Because I never went thinking I would even be tested. My Christianity rests on faith. It's an entirely different plane than "empiricism" or   "rationalism."  Many people on this blog know that I am somewhat more of a "skeptic" but in no way does this entail a lack of belief in God. I think doubt is not opposed to faith, but works in conjunction with faith ("faith is the substance of the things unseen").

So my interest in the Bible study that i attended and will keep on attending is finding myself in a group of like-minded individuals in terms of discussing the Bible in a critically-engaging approach.

Notes about the group study:


-Most of the atheists there were former Christians (one was an ex-Pentecostal). Sometimes they would get lost in polemical rants against the "stupidity" of Christians. I would quickly chime in of the lack of logical in their "rants" which was politely accepted.

-One of the attendees was a humanist. I don't like them (the difference between a humanist and other atheists is that humanists don't believe man is "fallen" or "incomplete"). My glorious moment was calling out the humanist on an unfounded leap in her logic.

-I was able to share my beliefs which were taken with absolute openness. Never once did I feel that the group was against me (I think this "feeling" was helped by a few "critical" remarks I made of the atheists' stance regarding some things).

-Best Part: The topic of discussion that day was about the Trinity! Which was a delight for me to discuss (because, naturally the atheists hated the logic of the trinity, and had never heard of a Oneness Christian).  The  Jewish atheist in attendance said he couldn't figure out why Christians don't just say that Jesus was a manifestation of God in flesh! I struggled not to yelp in delight.

Anyways, excuse my rants without a purpose...

Church: The land of girth?

It's been observed from the dawn of Pentecost that eating and Christians have had a very close-knit relationship. 

If there is anything that Christians have collective passion for outside of Christianity itself, is eating. 

And unsurprisingly, the L.A. Times recently released a report  that suggests religious young adults are more likely to be overweight.

Obviously, a correlation shouldn't be regarded as a causation, and the speculations seem very suspect and unscientific, but the study is interesting nonetheless.