After The Wire They Broke the Mold . . .

Published on by D. G. Hart

The missus and I finally polished off Walter White, the high school chemistry teacher turned meth cooker and dealer, the principal character of Breaking Bad. As I have indicated several times, Breaking Bad always left me (and the wife) feeling manipulated. Walt never seemed like a real character with genuine demons. He came across, instead, as a vehicle for writers to fashion for the purpose of extending a story line. Schuyler, his wife, also never seemed credible in her transformation from vapid housewife to gangster spouse. But then, the operation that Walt worked with either to cook, distribute, or make money never seemed credible, as if he could stand up to existing drug cartels and assorted kingpins and live to tell about it. The only likable characters were Saul, the lawyer, who is more cartoonish than real, Mike, the hitman who clearly would have cleaned Walt’s clock any number of times had it not been for the writer’s hi-jinks, and Hank, who seemed competent until he learned that Walt was the object of his long search and turned into a brooding bowl of jello for several episodes.

I am glad the series is over. We stayed with it only to see what the writers would try next.

But to compare this to the Sopranos (which I haven’t seen much) or The Wire defies belief. First, the characters in both of those shows seem plausible and are likable, even with their faults and wickedness. Second, the writers seemed to know something about organized crime and that you don’t simply decide one day to open up a drug operation and keep your life without gangstering up with a lot of protection. Third, in The Wire, as I’ve said, you like almost every character even if they are against each other — from Jimmy to Stringer Bell, from Prop Joe to Avon Barksdale, from Bubbles to Omar. And as the wife said, never has a show had so many African-American characters that you were sad to see go when the series ended (or when they died).

Of late, some commentators have wondered about the problem of binge viewing — the practice of watching numerous episodes over the course of one evening rather than seeing them in real time when they originally air. This may be a problem in the television series genre but I have no idea how anyone will remedy it. What concerns me is the knowledge that viewers have about the number of episodes left in a given season or show. In Homeland’s second season, for instance, several significant plot twists occur in the first two episodes in a way that leaves you wondering how the writers will get through all twelve episodes. The same happened at the beginning of the second part of Breaking Bad’s last season — though the habit of showing the result of a plot line, say Walt arranging his bacon into a 52 and then backing up to show how Walt got there felt contrived (as did too much of the show — have I already said that?). At least in a movie, even if you know how long it is supposed to be, you have a sense that before you is a complete unit that will resolve itself and let you walk away. With a television series, you have too much time to wonder what the writers are scheming and whether they are doing so simply to secure a contract for another season.

Unless, of course, you’re watching The Wire, in which case, you’re only left hoping that David Simon might consider another visit to Baltimore to update the doings of Gus, Bunk, Bubbles, and Marlowe.

189 thoughts on “After The Wire They Broke the Mold . . .”

  1. I have to say I liked the finale of “Bad”. No desire to rewatch the series, though.

    Some of “The Sopranos” characters are a bit cartoonish as well (especially Paulie & Silvio).

    I thought Simon jumped the shark a bit in the last season of “The Wire” plot-wise.

    Perhaps the lesson with all of these is the tremendous creative difficulty of sustaining a series over hundreds of hours of writing. These are amazing talents running & writing these shows and if they can even come close it’s like batting .400 in the Major Leagues.

    “Mad Men” is drawing to a close and I don’t think it has lost much steam, although for me the best episodes were when Don was between marriages. It’s less plot-driven than atmosphere driven, though, so it’s a bit easier to write. I have no idea how Weiner is going to tie it all up.

    In other news, the comedic genius Harold Ramis has died.

    http://literatecomments.com/2014/02/25/harold-ramis-1944-2014-great-comedic-writer-director-was-willing-to-learn/

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  3. Darryl, yep. What started strong definitely fizzled, as regards Breaking Bad.

    Chin up, though, yo. You didn’t experience the Lost, letdown I did, I imagine. After investing my time in that show, not sure I can ever follow a tv show again.

    It’s depsressing.

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  4. I agree. BB isn’t in the same league as the Wire or The Sopranos. The only show that has come close, IMO, is Dexter.

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  7. DH’s initial instinct (search the archives) re. BrBa was true. He called it a parable. A morality play.

    TVs not really part of my life, but anyone can get loads of clips, and frequently whole TV episodes, on youtube. There’s also plenty of commentary and analysis on serious blogs (not in the comments sections) that deal with the content of the entertainment business. So in that sense, I “followed” the latter portions of BrBa.

    DH’s frequent mentions of TheWire moved me to check out clips of that show as well. I completely agree that any comparison between the shows as to “realism” is impossible. BrBa is a dream, a parable. The two shows take two different tracks to comment on the actual fallen-nature state of affairs for man. TheWire chose a brutal reality (more brutal than the average middle-class American TV watcher knows) to expose it. BrBa made up a story about a middle-class American who, in order to cheat death, justifies himself straight to hell, making those evil decisions seem “almost reasonable” every time. The (atheist?) producer talked about an “OT-retribution” that WW was building up for himself.

    But the two shows have to be judged on whether they each accomplished their individual purposes. They shouldn’t be compared as to their “realism.” They weren’t (to use olympic-imagery) in the same competition.

    A last word on “Sopranos,” another show experienced through the ubiquitous clips. In my opinion, Sopranos is a show about the dark, dark heart of the average American. The writers ask the question (even if they don’t personally believe the premise, or wish it isn’t so): “How do I write this, such that the viewers say at some point, ‘I wonder what it would feel like to get away with that, as these people seem to.” Joe has a problem with Bill, or he wishes he could get with Patty, or he know some dirtbag who desperately needs a beat-down, or a bullet. And via the incredibly popular Sopranos, America vicariously fed its lust, its avarice, its malice.

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  8. I feel the same way about “Person of Interest” as DGH does about “The Wire.” This a TV series on which the wife and I became hooked early in the second season. I rented DVD’s of the first season to get caught up with the underlying plot and then by the time the 3rd season began to unfold we were left wondering not only what the writers were going to do with the remainder of the episode – however long that will be – but why we became interested in the first place.

    I get the impression that Hollywood has figured out that with the micro-second long attention spans of today’s viewing audience they can’t squeeze lengthy years’ long episodes out of a singular plot (as was the case in the early days of TV with legendary runs like “Gunsmoke,” “The Fugitive,” or “Perry Mason”). So they plan to crash and burn it early-on while overlapping it with new releases for the viewers to skip to like stepping stones across a brook (in the case of POI that’s probably “Intelligence” or whatever it’s called).

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  13. I was just being a jerk, you know, a Calvinist. It was just a way to hopefully get you to click the link – probably didn’t work. Someone release me from the cage.

    Erik, I probably watch too much tv – a lot of it garbage, some good.

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  14. I’m afraid I use television more as a vehicle for cultural and linguistic tourism, and for distracting entertainment. My expectations are low, but I can’t bear being insulted — which is what most US network TV does. Better to try to figure out obscure British cultural allusions, learn Yorkshire dialect and slang, and try to pick up on some Swedish while reading English subtitles. Then I go try to find the locations on Google Earth. I’m pretty familiar with Ystad, Sweden and Holmfirth, UK.

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  16. MP,

    I’ve encountered that Lutheran guy somewhere else online. He seems to have quite a chip on his shoulder about Calvinism. God the Father, Jesus and the Apostle Paul certainly do owe him an apology when he gets to Heaven.

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  20. Erik: “God the Father, Jesus and the Apostle Paul certainly do owe him an apology when he gets to Heaven.”

    – good one

    Issues Etc gets it right when they critique Arminianism and Liberalism but not when they try Reformed theology.

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  21. Erik,
    Are you saying “Nobody asked you, Puddles?” Or “Let’s talk about sex?” OK, thanks for that.

    If I gave my opinion, and made it sound like I was the kind of video-aficionado you clearly are, you’d be right to drop a dime on me for being a big Fake. So, I made it clear to anyone who cared that I was just a dilettante. With a low-anthropology, especially when it comes to middle-America–my kind of people.

    Did you think I was bragging about how much TV I don’t watch? Why do you think I like this OLTS? Because its about popping spiritually pretentious bubbles, and about high-views of ordinary means.

    Next time, just tell me how dumb you think my ideas are, and stop trying to guess about my sex life.

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  22. Chortles weakly
    Posted February 25, 2014 at 3:42 pm | Permalink
    I’ll bet our landlord can’t spin out three consecutive posts featuring photos of men in their underwear.

    Oh great. Thx, Chorty. Go and encourage him like that. I’m on pins and needles for what the next image is. He’s either all business, or it only gets worse. There’s no mushy middle at OL.

    Ay ay!

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  24. “… Issues Etc gets it right when they critique Arminianism and Liberalism but not when they try Reformed theology …”

    It ain’t altogether true. Reformed theologians like Kim Riddlebarger and Scott Clark have been on there and have had very meaningful dialogs with Todd Wilken. In fact, I was at a conference where Wilken was the guest speaker a number of years ago and I went up to him afterward and asked him if he’d ever considered having Dr. Clark on his program. He told me that he had, in fact, been on the show several times but that he’s rather hard to get due to his busy schedule. Then he thought for a moment and said, “He knows more about Lutheranism than most Lutherans.” (which IS true)

    I don’t know where they dug up this Jordan Cooper, but it sounds like he’s just regurgitating the common stereotypes and false boundary markers he’s had pounded into him by some seminary prof with an axe to grind.

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  25. Is this a good time to tell people I’m morally and aesthetically above watching TV? Good – consider it done. Let’s be bold, Puddles – let our yes be yes and our snoot be snoot.

    Chorts, thanks for the Idiot tip. And I’ll never think about yoga the same way.

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  26. There seems to be tons of love for the Wire’s realism compared to BB. While very true, I have to agree with Erik that the last season really jumped the shark in terms of realism with the detective shenanigans (trying to stay vague). Not to mention the earlier ongoing issue with the drug shantytown – I don’t care if it was in the early 2000s – such a scheme would never have gone unnoticed as long as it did in the show. Further, the newspaper focus was about as exciting as watching a cooking show. Cooking shows are realistic too, they aren’t very entertaining. But the wire did have great compelling characters and very well thought-out universe.

    BB was a morality play as Puddlegum pointed out – not trying to be some realistic examination of crime, politics, and society like the wire. The two are apples and oranges, though overlap in certain areas. Similar to The Shield – also quite a morality play – no actual police officer believes it was very realistic – that’s just the backdrop to facilitate exploring various themes and human nature.

    It’s like Andrew mentioned with Lost above. Super disappointing finale, but the closure with the characters was still well-done – it ended up being a more character-driven than plot-driven series in the final analysis which no one was really expecting. Still a misfire, but I admire and respect it.

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  27. But, in full disclosure, I am not above continuing to follow the Celtics, and aesthetics don’t get much lower than that. If they trade Rondo I may walk away from them altogether and only have the Red Sox left, the Patriots being impossible to follow and my interest in the Iowa Hawkeyes having received a death blow by the spectacle that was Steve Alford.

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  28. Maybe, Cleat, the dissapointing finale helps remind us that it’s entertainment we are dealing in here, not the second coming.

    I’m still bitter about Stelly’s birds taking my niners to town. But in fairness, northern California sports has been good for the last few years.

    Good job chiming in on the TV thread. I’ll have to check out The Shield. If I’m awake at the half way point, that’s a thumbs up.

    And…
    NOW I’m out.

    Peace.

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  29. George: “It ain’t altogether true. Reformed theologians like Kim Riddlebarger and Scott Clark have been on there and have had very meaningful dialogs with Todd Wilken.”

    Thanks, George. I like both of those Reformed men you mentioned. I’ll go look for those episodes.

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  30. DGH,

    I’m sorry but you lost all credibility with me when you didn’t mention Jesse Pinkman as a likable character!!!!! He is *the* likable character in the series and he is the one who is attempting (though failing) to exercise his demons while Walt is plunging deeper into his. And to name Hank a “likable” character is only something I could do in retrospect. I was also suspicious of him and couldn’t tell if he was supposed to be a douche cop or a good guy. I never really found Hank indisputably likable until much later in the series (it seemed the writers wanted to show him as someone butting into Walter’s life and attempting to father Walter Jr. early).

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  31. Chortles,

    That wasn’t aimed at you.

    What I tire of us guys who start a conversation with, “Well, I don’t know jack squat about X because I’m above all that” and then proceed to pontificate about it.

    I’m a proponent of actually doing the work first if I’m going to try to come off like I have an opinion that anyone should give a rat’s a*s about.

    We can’t all be experts on everything and just having a light conversation is fine, but in this area I tire of the “attitude” I get from too many Christians.

    It’s like Mikelmann feels when people start spouting off on the finer points of the law right after they’ve slammed attorneys or you would feel if someone starting spouting off on broadcast journalism or insurance after they’ve just put down those professions.

    If someone thinks something is lame and spends no time involved with it, just stay the heck out of conversations about it.

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  33. And just to clarify, my comment wasn’t aimed at George in any way either. George is a great example of how someone who is not a connoisseur should conduct themselves in this area. He doesn’t watch a lot of stuff, but he is open to suggestions, has good taste in what he does choose to watch, and is a fun guy to talk with on the subject. If he disagreed with someone else’s choice I suspect he would be polite and respectful and not kill the conversation for those who were having it.

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  34. This actually ties into my frustration with Tom Van Dyke. Pretend this site is a university. He wants to come into a 400 level class without being willing to show anyone he has taken the 100, 200, & 300 level prerequisites. It just becomes tedious trying to have a discussion after awhile. He thinks he’s somehow “winning”, (as if that’s the objective here), but what he’s really failing to do is even have a real conversation because he’s unwilling for whatever reason to do the hard work of actually having a religious faith (or even a secular faith) that he will reveal to others, to join a church that he will admit to, to be a churchman, etc. It becomes a meaningless, tedious, discussion.

    After a point Doug Sowers was the same way. His Theonomy was detached from real life. He was not a guy applying it pastorally in the real world. It was just a theory he had learned three decades ago.

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  35. I didn’t even comment on this thread and you’re doing me dirt, Erik. In a discussion of TV? What gives?

    Actually, I usually comment on the near-endless misrepresentations of Catholic theology that are easily looked up. 400-level class indeed.

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  36. If you want to watch a TV show that’s all about how real it is out there on the mean streets of America you guys should check out Enlightened on HBO. I have never experienced so many cringe inducing scenes…talk about “real”…man…that show really put it out there….and for the record, I’m not being sarcastic.

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  37. You know the tone people employ when announcing that they don’t own a TV. Casually tossed off, yet firmly resolute; it’s the same tone that might be used to dispel any other unflattering misrepresentation (e.g., “Oh, I don’t have syphilis.”). The funny thing is that nobody ever actually asks the question, “Do you own a TV?”

    Unfortunately, there are scads of people who seem convinced they’re blowing everyone’s minds with the announcement. Others, meanwhile, manage to keep TV-free homes without ever drawing attention to it. The mere fact of not owning a television does not make a person insufferable (although it certainly does help.) As with so much else in life, it’s the way that the information is conveyed that makes the difference. Sometimes it’s a pre-emptive conversational tourniquet, stanching the flow of any entertainment-related questions to come. Other times it’s a lifestyle signpost, the implications of which are murky at best. And then, of course, once in a while it’s a sort of long-form birth certificate that proves one’s subscription to The Economist.

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  38. Tom,

    The topic is people pronouncing judgment on something with limited first hand experience or in-depth knowledge. That’s you, unfortunately, at least as far as we know.

    The circle of people who will even attempt to engage you will get smaller and smaller.

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  41. If I was part of the inspiration for a mini-controversy above, I should probably explain.I couldn’t help throwing a little wrench in the works, even if it was tongue in cheek. There’s the potential of moralistic pride about a zillion things, including turning off the TV. Not good. But there can be a counter-reaction in which stuff that really isn’t that big a deal is elevated to a status it really never deserved. It can, in part, be a counter-reaction to the moralists.

    I know a guy who’s really into video games. He goes to video game discussion boards and knows the little video game songs going back to the beginning. Fine, friend, but don’t tell me you’re doing something sophisticated or educational. I might read about Red Sox prospects, but I don’t have any desire to hold that up as an ideal aspiration, and I have no interest in converting the video game guy into a Red Sox fan.

    If a guy wants to collect rock music, hey, I hope you enjoy it. But don’t tell me you are at a 400 level of study so you can tell me whether Led Zeppelin or U2 do better music. Television is like that. A freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior in the University of Televison? Puhlease,

    It’s a liberty but if you yip really loud when someone criticizes it on a non-dogmatic basis, maybe you’ve overestimated it. We do tend to enshrine our personal tastes.

    Now go talk about The Wire. I’m going over to the Looney Tunes Discussion Board to discuss the order of the dueling weapons in Bugs Bunny’s “The Marriage of Figaro.” Nothing wrong with either one.

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  42. “The Poseur
    Of all known varietals of “I Don’t Own a TV” people, The Poseur is definitely the most likely to annoy. Even the most tangential subject matter will prompt this person to mention that thing he doesn’t own, and he seems to equate this lack of ownership with an enlightened, progressive ethos. He may or may not have a job or a band or whatever, but he definitely has a laptop and a thirst for entertainment. For the Poseur, the unspoken second half of the sentence “Oh, I don’t own a TV” is “but I frequently watch stuff online.”

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  43. Mitch,

    You weren’t. It was the two anonymous dudes, but even they are alright. In truth it’s probably the after-effects of that other guy from a few weeks ago who will remain unnamed.

    But, would you say that someone who has a Ph.D in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of Chicago has nothing on a guy who watches no television or film because he assumes those areas are inherently without merit? Guess what D.G. Hart’s undergraduate major was? Film Studies.

    http://cms.uchicago.edu/

    And if sports, video games, television, rock music, and cartoons are unworthy of any serious consideration or study, then why are such disciplines as literature, the social sciences, or art any more worthy?

    Who decides what is legitimate and what is not? That is the purpose of the discipline of criticism.

    Supposedly “trivial” things are billion dollar industries.

    I think the Presbyterian & Reformed get dangerously close to a fundamentalist aesthetic at times.

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  44. You also have to consider that the interlopers on posts like this one are not the people who want to talk about “Breaking Bad”, it’s the people who haven’t seen “Breaking Bad” but feel compelled to make some blanket statement putting down the medium.

    My response should probably be just to ignore them on such threads since they’re not addressing the topic at hand, which is what I will do from now on.

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  45. Erik Charter
    Posted February 25, 2014 at 9:39 pm | Permalink
    Tom,

    The topic is people pronouncing judgment on something with limited first hand experience or in-depth knowledge. That’s you, unfortunately, at least as far as we know.

    The circle of people who will even attempt to engage you will get smaller and smaller.

    Oh, you’d be surprised. The circle of people I bother to engage is what’s small. I like you hardcore OLTSers, the last of the Calvinist Mohicans, even as “Presbyterianism” joins the scrap heap of ecclesiastical history around your ears.

    It’s you “Calvinists” who are getting smaller and smaller, not just in numbers, but pettier and pettier with each other. Circular firing squads, then slitting the throats of the dying just to make sure.

    I give you only the surface of your reality, Erik, just as Darryl is discovering what these “scholarly’ bastards say behind HIS back.

    You think I’m your enemy, perhaps, Darryl, but I’m one of your best friends in this world. I’m even one of your religion’s, your microreligion’s–best friends.

    Not that that counts for anything in your theology, but it counts nonetheless. Or not. We’ll see.

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  46. foxy dame, wrong again. No offense, but Vince Gilligan was just playing around. BB is not good television. Morality play? Where was the morality? Where was the wrestling with dilemmas? Walt was a collection of episodes. Jesse had more to offer. But they didn’t develop that.

    It could have been a study in contrasts — a different set of qualities like the one between Stringer and Avon. But BB’s writers weren’t really serious. They worked like a worship committee at a contemporary worship church.

    And if you don’t see season 5 as the payoff for Simon a former journalist, or the greatness of Gus, then you belong to the wrong church.

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  48. Brandon, Jesse is complicated but he was not likable in the first season, and not sure he qualified in the second. Again, the writers used characters to do whatever they wanted to keep the series going (which is what Vince G. admitted in a Charlie Rose interview — that my wife saw). I wish the series had done more with Jesse. If the writers ever wanted a sequel, Jesse would be an obvious choice. But whom did they choose? Saul. A riot and I love Bob Odenkirk (going back to his Larry Sanders days). But he’s out of a cartoon.

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  50. “You weren’t. It was the two anonymous dudes, but even they are alright. In truth it’s probably the after-effects of that other guy from a few weeks ago who will remain unnamed.”

    Then I managed to blow the opportunity to remain quiet. How unfortunate.

    “I think the Presbyterian & Reformed get dangerously close to a fundamentalist aesthetic at times.”

    I’ve suggested a dialectic in which a moralistic mindset judges TV (or booze or tobacco, etc.) and the response of the judged is not a defense of liberty but an overvaluation of the activity. In other words, the proper response to an impingement on liberty is a defense of liberty, not an over-valuation of the matter being condemned. So I will enjoy a cigar while keeping it in the category of a simple pleasure, not by asserting that I am an especially clever fellow for having smoked a few.

    “Supposedly “trivial” things are billion dollar industries.”

    It’s lawful to engage in pop culture, but “pop” does not make something more sophisticated or deeper. Capitalism produces all kinds of things that are not significant beyond the fact that someone is making money. Again, I don’t know that it’s a positive thing to get caught in a dialectic where the response to someone being snooty about cultural matters is an overestimation of them. We don’t need senior seminars on the music of Katy Perry.

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  51. DGH, I never did catch the Chargers. My Hillsdale daughter has a bit of disdain for college football so she ignored my requests to see a game. But I do know they made the Refrigerator Bowl back in the day, and I think they put a kicker into the NFL. Alas, that’s all I will ever know about them.

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  52. I think McLuhan was right — the medium is the message. I’m going to horrify some here, but — in a way — the difference between the best and worst TV show (or film) I’ve seen is not that much. I can enjoy bad movies and shows as much as “good” ones very often. A movie is very much about being a movie. Same with TV, but it gets interesting when you start squeezing films onto iPhones and watching old, small-format TV shows on big flat screens.

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  53. Erik Charter
    Posted February 25, 2014 at 3:19 pm | Permalink
    I read the Cliff Notes version of The Iliad this morning and was thinking about dashing off a doctoral dissertation on it this evening.

    The sequel was a favorite when I read in high school.

    Don’t mind me and my high brow, whilst I look down my nose at all y’alls..

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  55. MM – So I will enjoy a cigar while keeping it in the category of a simple pleasure, not by asserting that I am an especially clever fellow for having smoked a few.

    Erik – I think the point you continue to miss, though, is that no one is asserting they are “an especially clever fellow”. People are merely commenting on a common interest for which they share enthusiasm.

    Say you as a cigar enthusiast go to the “Cigar Aficionado” website for some discussion on cigars. Your going back and forth with other enthusiasts, having a fun conversation. Then some Christian anti-tobacco zealot from the American Cancer Society shows up spouting statistics about the dangers of tobacco and attempting to throw a wet blanket on the conversation. How do you react?

    This is my point: When Christians want to discuss an particular area in which they have liberty is it too much to ask that other Christians who are disinterested just butt out?

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  56. “I think the point you continue to miss…”

    Au contraire, mon frère, you are the one asserting there are 400 level courses in TV-ology. I totally understand the Terribilus trauma, but I can’t find anything especially incendiary that set you on fire. Hence, you struck the match.

    I know Sean is itching to bust me in the chops. “You’re in a dialectical prison and thrown away the key. Mikelmann don’t want schism, he wantsa set you free.” (free, free, set you free.)

    (It used to sound sophisticated to speak a bit of French. No more. See, I am comfortable being passé.)

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  57. And the place where the “fundamentalist aesthetic” comes into play is the devaluing of certain disciplines and interests vis-a-vis others. If my daughter wants to become a CPA and my son wants to become a Ph.D. film scholar I think both of those choices are awesome. I don’t laud my daughter for being solid and practical and chide my son for being trivial and useless.

    If one thinks doing creative work, whether it’s writing a TV series, a movie, or a hit rock and roll song is easy, go ahead and try it. I suspect none of us here are Vince Gilligan, Matthew Weiner, David Chase, Woody Allen, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Donald Fagen, or Walter Becker. These people may not always use their gifts in the way Christians would choose, but they are/were amazingly gifted people.

    I shared an “Amadeus” clip yesterday and I am reminded of that story of Salieri and Mozart again. Salieri was faithful and wanted nothing more than to glorify God with his music. Mozart could care less about glorifying God but was out-of-this-world gifted. History is forever indebted to Mozart and has forgotten Salieri. God does indeed work in mysterious ways.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ciFTP_KRy4

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  58. MM- You are the one asserting there are 400 level courses in TV-ology.

    Erik – O.K. Mitch, you win. You could walk into the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU or the Ph.D. program in Cinema and Media Studies at Chicago and run those places off the street since what they are doing is so simple. You must have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

    http://cms.uchicago.edu/graduate

    Good grief.

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  59. “And the place where the “fundamentalist aesthetic” comes into play is the devaluing of certain disciplines and interests vis-a-vis others.”

    Discussion of the relative merits of fields of study and interests in general pre-dated fundamentalism and is on a different footing entirely. You’re letting Terribilus control the conversation. If Chorts wants to talk about McLuhan or someone else wants to discuss the relevance of Ellul’s “The Humiliation of the Word” as it applies to television it isn’t creeping fundamentalism. There’s plenty of waaay lefties with disdain for television. I say vive la difference but discussing the difference should not be a cause of offense.

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  60. Letterman’s Stupid Human Tricks weren’t easy. That doesn’t make them a topic of graduate studies. I’m out.

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  61. MM,

    I’m less offended at this point than I am thinking you are making bad arguments.

    “Discussion of the relative merits of fields of study and interests in general pre-dated fundamentalism and is on a different footing entirely.”

    O.K. What are the “different footings”?

    For starters, Should the study of Literature (American, English, World, Comparative) be a part of a liberal arts education? Should people consider pursuing graduate studies in these areas? Becoming professors? Should Christians? Why or why not?

    Once you’ve answered these, I ask the same questions regarding film, art, history & philosophy — all of the humanities.

    If you give different answers, why?

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  62. MM – If Chorts wants to talk about McLuhan or someone else wants to discuss the relevance of Ellul’s “The Humiliation of the Word” as it applies to television it isn’t creeping fundamentalism. There’s plenty of waaay lefties with disdain for television. I say vive la difference but discussing the difference should not be a cause of offense.

    Erik – I don’t object to having that conversation, but it’s odd in the context of a thread discussing the specifics of a particular show.

    Again, you’re discussing the merits of Cuban cigars and some dude weighs in on the evils of Castro’s regime and another chimes in on the evils of tobacco. How do you react?

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  63. MM – Letterman’s Stupid Human Tricks weren’t easy. That doesn’t make them a topic of graduate studies. I’m out.

    Erik – Are you saying intelligent people can’t make distinctions between Letterman’s Stupid Human tricks and say, “The Godfather” or “Downton Abbey”?

    If I want to talk about the Psalter Hymnal do you say that’s a foolish conversation because The Methodists also have a hymnal and it’s lame.

    Does the fact that a genre has some works that lack artistic merit mean that all works in the genre lack artistic merit?

    Like

  64. Well, without breaking out my ‘Postman’, I think it’s a matter of evaluation and purpose. The very idea that visual media can be used properly and improperly or that it(visual entertainment) can be done well or poorly, is to establish a grid of appreciation and understanding which is capable of being codified beyond intuitive reaction. IOW, it is governed, bounded and limited by ‘principles’ inherent to it’s medium. This would necessarily give itself to at least learning, understanding and appreciating what those principles and bounding are, which in turn would create demarcations between remedial and advanced understandings of it’s use. These sorts of distinctions would seem to give merit to Erik’s argument of different levels of learning or appreciation. So, it very well could be, that MM’s dismissal is a mere matter of ignorance or unappreciative perspective, even if established in comparison to another medium such as the written word. That TV or visual media can be, and is often, done poorly is not a necessary flaw in the medium itself for it’s intended purposes, just as we don’t dismiss the written word as necessarily trivial or flat because poor writers taking advantage of the printing press have been the source of all sorts of ‘bad bowls of writing’. In fact, the misuse of the medium could be just as much a justification for remedial and advanced training in it’s use as it would be for many other liberal disciplines. Furthermore, because of the preponderance of visual media in our culture, it may be to our benefit as a culture to NOT hand the medium over to those less equipped but seek to cultivate a people who can most ably use and take advantage of the platform so as to mitigate against it’s misuse and deleterious capacity- Just as we might resist purchasing the works of bad writers and force them from the vocation in search of a more apt means of supporting themselves- IOW, discrimination is a more cultured and learned response than dismissal, and that of course brings us back to education.

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  65. Tom – Oh, you’d be surprised. The circle of people I bother to engage is what’s small. I like you hardcore OLTSers, the last of the Calvinist Mohicans, even as “Presbyterianism” joins the scrap heap of ecclesiastical history around your ears.

    It’s you “Calvinists” who are getting smaller and smaller, not just in numbers, but pettier and pettier with each other. Circular firing squads, then slitting the throats of the dying just to make sure.

    I give you only the surface of your reality, Erik, just as Darryl is discovering what these “scholarly’ bastards say behind HIS back.

    You think I’m your enemy, perhaps, Darryl, but I’m one of your best friends in this world. I’m even one of your religion’s, your microreligion’s–best friends.

    Not that that counts for anything in your theology, but it counts nonetheless. Or not. We’ll see.

    Erik – Friends don’t let friends post drunk.

    Like

  67. I’m over my daily comment quota (swipe this away if you must), but I may be the only here in anacting program(BFA in theater acting) for all of two days, before I considered just what trajectory my career was taking. Acting simply sounded fun, and when I thought to reconsider, I simply started at the top of the aphabet again, going from Acting, back a few spaces up to Accounting.

    I still wonder what might of been..

    too much about me, yo

    Like

  68. Tom,

    It’s kind of like how people are not allowed to buy a life insurance policy on a random person. They have to have an insurable interest. You really don’t have an insurable interest in these important debates (at least that you’ll reveal).

    The only guy who has been able to pull off productive debate here without such an interest is CD-Host and that’s only because he spent years in the church before becoming an atheist and truly has a lot of hard earned knowledge to bring to bear on these conversations.

    In the entire time you’ve been here I don’t remember you once referring to a book you’ve read that is relevant to the subject of discussion. You mostly just post internet links that it looks like you just found. When you try to get into the weeds of Presbyterian & Reformed history, doctrine, and practice your lack of doing the work shows. This is why it becomes boring.

    If you come here as an atheist who really knows atheism or as a Catholic who really knows Catholicism (and is “all in” with either of these), that’s another (and far more interesting) matter.

    Like

  73. mikelmann says: “Terribilus trauma”
    Is that what it’s called when someone pushes your face into the word of God and your own churche’s standards copied, pasted and linked from her own website? I guess that would be traumatic for the folks around here.

    ERIK says: “This is my point: When Christians want to discuss an particular area in which they have liberty is it too much to ask that other Christians who are disinterested just butt out”
    There is no biblical liberty in most of the areas you people immerse yourselves in on this site. Never has been, never will be. I demonstrated that in repeated unassailable fashion here and was treated to the most wanton display of infantile intellectual and spiritual cowardice I have ever directly experienced. The overtly God hating pagans I wrangle with are far more engaging and honorable. My concern Erik is for the next generation that people like Dr. Hart and yourself, by marrying the spotlessly holy Lamb of God to the world and the things therein, are leading right into the jaws of hell. Including FIRST and foremost your own wives and children. I say again. This ain’t “Terribilus trauma”. It’s Westminster Calvinism as advanced on the OPC’s own website. How heartrendingly sad.

    The filth and blasphemy that you people celebrate here is not the liberty of Christian maturity regarding “things indifferent”. It is an abomination in the sight of the God who you WILL stand before and give an account for every last fellow child of father Adam you have violated, every last abuse of His great name that you have excused and every last uncatechized young person you lead astray. Yes, I know. The playground policy of the “Doug Sowers” rule will get me nothing more than grown men with out sticking tongues. I’ve not come to expect anything more from this crew. You can run from me, but you cannot hide from God.

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  74. I didn’t read Greg’s post above (im more of a 140 character limit guy). I hope he can appreicate our landlord allowing for the freedom for anyone to post, even when his views are a bit at odds around here, it seems.

    Whoops, more than 140..

    Like

  75. DG, Xian hedonist much? Just kidding. Please provide your daily caloric intake and typical types, quantities, servings, fat grams, and prices you pay for food. That way I’ll know whether or not I should launch a snot-slinging jihad on you for gluttony and excess. Seems to be the thing now.

    Like

  76. Hard times for Eminem: “But, in full disclosure, I am not above continuing to follow the Celtics, and aesthetics don’t get much lower than that. If they trade Rondo I may walk away from them altogether and only have the Red Sox left, the Patriots being impossible to follow and my interest in the Iowa Hawkeyes having received a death blow by the spectacle that was Steve Alford.”

    JohnnY: Are you contemplating Breaking Bad Eminem? I would be if I was following those sports franchises. I have no clue who is going to win the NCAA basketball tournament this year but I will be pulling for Izzo’s Michigan State Spartans. I think about 25 different teams could win it this year. The early rounds could be fun the watch- but they always are.

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  77. Andrew Buckingham says: “I hope he can appreciate our landlord allowing for the freedom for anyone to post,”
    That I actually do very much appreciate that. I’ll give him sincere credit for at least that much. Although the “Doug Sowers” rule was intended to get rid of me so he wouldn’t have to be constantly confronted with his betrayal of Christ, his family and his church. I’d prefer that Dr. Hart honor me with a defense of his brand new, innovative views. That cannot ever happen though because there IS no defense He knows that.

    Andrew Buckingham says: ” even when his views are a bit at odds around here, it seems.”
    Ok, but my views ARE the historic Presbyterian views in these areas. Previous generations would have considered something like the wire to be straight up 200 proof pornographic worldliness. The views around HERE are the ones that are odd. At least in the light of historic reformed orthodoxy. Yes, Dr. Hart absolutely knows that.

    You ar enot practicing liberty. You are backslidden. Repent and live.

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  78. DGH: Erik, and what if you’re wife wants to appear in a nude scene in a movie?

    DGH, please don’t tell me that on the stroke of every hour your forehead opens up a trap door and a little wooden bird comes out and says…

    CUCKOO
    CUCKOO
    CUCKOO
    CUCKOO
    CUCKOO

    😀

    Like

  79. Erik: Tom,
    It’s kind of like how people are not allowed to buy a life insurance policy on a random person. They have to have an insurable interest. You really don’t have an insurable interest in these important debates (at least that you’ll reveal).

    In sports terms, Tom is arguing with us over reading the putting green without realizing how many hundreds of hours it took us to develop a decent and consistent golf swing.

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  80. D.G. – Erik, and what if you’re wife wants to appear in a nude scene in a movie?

    Erik – And the fish continues swimming right past the shiny thing that just might have a hook attached to it…

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  82. Tom,

    You deal with religion as if you’re acquiring knowledge to prepare for a game show.

    We deal with religion as if we’re preparing to die.

    That’s a huge difference.

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  83. Me is teeing off again. Woohoo!

    Erik, and what if you’re wife wants to appear in a nude scene in a movie?

    I had a friend one year my senior also go to UC Santa Barbara. His girlfiend was in the acting program. The question DG raises was something my friend lamented to me, that part of being in theater was doing things like this (allowing his GF to do this).

    Not sure what he’s up to now, my friend, or if he stayed together with that GF. All this to say, these questions aren’t as out there as they might first seem.

    I recall someone from my church I was raised in voicing true concerns about me wanting to enter entertainment.

    Anywho, don’t mind me while I backslide. We all having fun yet, peeps?

    Toodles.

    Like

  87. A show that some of you men’s men would like is “Justified” with Timothy Olyphant. I’m about ready to start season 3. It’s kind of “The Dukes of Hazard” meets Tommy Lee Jones’ character from “The Fugitive”.

    Like

  90. Good call, Erik. When talking wives, indeed, we take our sandals off, for ’tis Holy ground on which we tread.

    Maybe I dreamed that little bit up, we’ve been comboxxing a while now, havent we?..

    Peace.

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  91. Mention of “The Sowers Rule” makes me nostalgic for days of yore (and what an honor to have a rule named after you).

    Of course I also get nostalgic for my dog who would routinely get loose and run all over town like a maniac for hours on end.

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  93. Erik Charter
    Posted February 26, 2014 at 2:34 pm | Permalink
    A.B.,

    Guys’ wives are not fair game as far as I’m concerned unless they come here on their own.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2L_0bDK6tY

    Indeed. Clue the management around here in on that.

    ____
    kent
    Posted February 26, 2014 at 11:15 am | Permalink
    Erik: Tom,
    It’s kind of like how people are not allowed to buy a life insurance policy on a random person. They have to have an insurable interest. You really don’t have an insurable interest in these important debates (at least that you’ll reveal).

    In sports terms, Tom is arguing with us over reading the putting green without realizing how many hundreds of hours it took us to develop a decent and consistent golf swing.

    Actually it’s more like you have a wicked slice and tell everyone they should have one too. I keep giving you the chance to hit one straight every once in awhile, but it seems to be against your rules.

    Erik Charter
    Posted February 26, 2014 at 9:07 am | Permalink
    Tom,

    You’re not my enemy, honestly. You’re just boring me and it doesn’t have to be that way.

    I’ll try to watch more TV.

    Back to Philadelphia for family matters for awhile. Wish me luck. Peace.

    Like

  96. Erik Charter: Guys’ wives are not fair game as far as I’m concerned unless they come here on their own.
    We’ve been through this Erik. You are now being hypocritical after you had valiantly sacrificed your own wife on the altar of Hollywood HERE. Anyone who missed the last time he and Dr. Hart were politely yet thoroughly exposed on this should read that whole page actually.

    The “Landlord” is well aware. He keeps hiding, in the knowledge that his worldly world will come crashing in if ever he were to actually engage anyone passably competent about the apostasy he preaches here. I wonder if the OPC actually knows the ravenous wolves in her midst? I’m betting she does and doesn’t care 😦 Or doesn’t know the difference any more.

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  97. Tom – Actually it’s more like you have a wicked slice and tell everyone they should have one too.

    Erik – You’re doing some theology here, which I like. Now tell me the standard by which you judge a slice from a straight shot.

    About all you’ve said in the past is that Reformed churches are small and splintered, which is more of a sociological statement than a theological statement.

    I’m into theological truth more than I am into sociology.

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  98. AB, look up Jesus Juking

    “How can you laugh in this world after the Lord suffered so much on the cross!!!!!! ”

    “So you go to a movie when there see people suffering on then planet for the cause of Christ!!!!! ”

    No names come immediately to mind…

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  99. I went through a morbid phase the summer between my freshman and sophomore year in college. I was working at a Young Life Summer camp in Minnesota (probably too hard) and I remember getting all mad and preachy with all of the other staff (high school and college kids) one night about how they could consider doing anything other than being a third world missionary when so many people in other parts of the world hadn’t heard about Jesus. I think I was in my Keith Green phase. I got over it.

    This approach NEVER works well.

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  101. “Erik – O.K. Mitch, you win. You could walk into the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU or the Ph.D. program in Cinema and Media Studies at Chicago and run those places off the street since what they are doing is so simple. You must have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

    Good grief.”

    How do you know when EC is really torqued? If you post by your name, he asks where you go to church. If you are an anon he bypasses the pseudonym. But that’s OK, your openness is one of your endearing qualities.

    But I do think you have entirely missed my point. Maybe it’s an accountant blind spot, I dunno, but I’ll trot it out one more time. Let’s say you’ve been told by Mr. T that you nuthin but a fooh in the biblical sense of the word and a hobby of yours is rife with sin. But then someone critiques your hobby not in a morally superior way but rather on the basis of relative usefulness, relative quality, etc. You may be traumatized yet again and start looking up Lutheran churches in the phone book but you shouldn’t. You should just listen and consider the weight of the argument. And if you find yourself unable to do that, maybe you’ve elevated your personal taste to canonical status.

    I shall illustrate. I kind of like the blues. One guy comes by and tells me I’m wicked for listening to the blues and my soul is in grave danger. I will ignore him. But then let’s say a Strange commenter says “hey, mikelmann, opera is deeper, more interesting, and richer in themes that elevate the human soul.” I can listen to that. Maybe he’s right, and maybe not. Maybe I reject his reasoning or maybe I just figure I am what I am and the blues suit me just fine. But if I flip out and lump him in with the earlier critic I have been unable to distinguish between a legalistic argument and, oh, let’s call it an argument about the relative goods among liberties. Or maybe I’ve put my preferences on a pedestal where they should not be.

    I don’t watch much TV. But I do other things. I follow a couple sports teams. I’ll sporadically watch something on Netflix or Amazon Prime. I’ll read odds and ends. But as I say this I’m not supposing to be on the moral high road. It’s just that TV doesn’t give me many hedons per minute whereas these other things do. You should argue against your own personal preference some time. It might be liberating.

    What is this hedons per minute calculus you say? It’s pleasure units per measure of consumption. I use it for food, too. I’m not morally superior for bypassing grocery store pastries – its just that they are low in hedons per calorie. But Highland Bakery? Lots of hedons per calorie, so there I am with powdered sugar on my face.

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  102. M&M, perhaps, but when the high-brower starts talking about elevating the soul, unless he’s speaking figuratively, I get squeamish. This was the reasoning my CRC neos used to baptize cellos, violins, and organs (six figures to service, btw, zing!) and scoff at drums and geetars. On the temporal spectrum there is a case for blues being lower order and Mozart higher (where lower doesn’t mean worthless), but the soul is eternal and elevated by psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

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  103. MM – But then someone critiques your hobby not in a morally superior way but rather on the basis of relative usefulness, relative quality, etc.

    Erik – Where do your references to “Loony Toons”, “Katy Perry”, and “Letterman’s Stupid Human Tricks” fit in with not conducting this conversation in “a morally superior way”?

    MM – but rather on the basis of relative usefulness, relative quality, etc.

    Erik – Relative to what? What have you offered as an alternative? I’ve asked you pointed questions about the humanities above that you haven’t answered.

    MM – You should just listen and consider the weight of the argument. And if you find yourself unable to do that, maybe you’ve elevated your personal taste to canonical status.

    Erik – Until I know what I’m comparing my tastes to I can’t address that (especially with you setting up straw men as noted above).

    MM – You may be traumatized yet again and start looking up Lutheran churches in the phone book but you shouldn’t.

    But if I flip out and lump him in with the earlier critic

    Erik – You’re starting to intermingle private e-mails with public comments which is a low blow.

    MM – But if I flip out and lump him in with the earlier critic I have been unable to distinguish between a legalistic argument and, oh, let’s call it an argument about the relative goods among liberties. Or maybe I’ve put my preferences on a pedestal where they should not be.

    Erik – Once again, I haven’t seen this alternative argument. There has been no Alan Strange in this conversation.

    MM – . It’s just that TV doesn’t give me many hedons per minute whereas these other things do.

    Erik – And who is trying to stop you? Once again, you entered into a specific conversation about a specific show, which I don’t even know if you’ve watched. Why not give Hart a hard time for even bringing the topic up?

    MM – What is this hedons per minute calculus you say? It’s pleasure units per measure of consumption.

    Erik – Show me that your personal system for calculating these things is normative for me?

    If you want to give friendly advice, you need to not burn bridges from the outset.If someone poisons the well from the get-go and then wants to be your big brother or dad after that, it just doesn’t fly. You’re acting like I have the axe to grind here, but I think you do. Just get it out there. Keep the bridge burning, brother.

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  104. Maybe a bad choice of words, Z. The idea is, I suppose, turning thoughts to grand themes rather than dwelling in relatively base ones.Maybe you read some literature that does the same thing. Hey, I’m not one of those guys who can pick out wines and revels in opera so I’m mostly saying such notions are notions to consider. I’m closer to Joe Six Pack than I am to the aristocrat; both are susceptible to canonizing their preferences.

    I don’t intend for any of this to apply to what happens in a worship service.

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  105. Erik, I honestly don’t know what’s going on in your head to make you so hostile. As for your low blow accusation, I’m pretty sure you have lamented Reformed oddballs and legalists in comments here. Let’s not discuss this further.

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  106. Mitch – Let’s not discuss this further.

    Erik – If you will answer some of the questions I’ve posed to you I am o.k. discussing it. If you just want to lecture, then I agree we should drop it.

    The best argument against “The Medium is the Message” is Shakespeare. Most people would agree with the contention that the plays of Shakespeare are worthwhile. Now you can read the plays, see them performed in the theatre, and watch them on film. Am I supposed to believe that reading the play is highbrow, watching a theatrical performance middlebrow, and watching Richard Burton’s or Kenneth Branagh’s “Hamlet” on film is lowbrow?

    Someone make that case.

    The Westminster Longer Catechism only prohibits “lacivious” theatrical performances, it doesn’t reject visual media entirely. Television and film were obviously not even on their radar.

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  108. What’s this?!?!?! Discord in the camp?

    Erik if you think the Westminster Divines would have done anything except declare instantaneous moral anathema upon the garbage you people feed yourselves and your families? You’re insane. I mean as in “they’re coming to take me away HA HA!” insane. Thorazine scheduling should begin immediately. Why do you think the far more than capable Dr. D.G. Hart would rather let me go on and on on his site than dare address this? Because he KNOWS that YOUR OWN church fathers excommunicate you from the grave. Find a way to make him tell you the truth. Even your 20th century OPC fathers would vomit if they knew what you were doing in their name.

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  110. Erik,

    Do you suggest that in each instance a person encounters Shakespeare the same way no matter whether he a) reads Hamlet, b) watches Hamlet performed live, and c) sees Hamlet on the DVR? The medium has zero impact/shaping influence/moderating effect?

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  111. Even DGH affirms some sort of media bias as you will recall from his insistence that one’s nicotine must be smoked, not vaped. And was it Muddy who said e-cigs were inherently corny? If Hamlet is Hamlet, then is not nicotine nicotine?

    And forgive me if I missed the transition from Postman to McLuhan, but Postman’s paradigm cast the medium as the metaphor, rather than message or massage. Picking nits? Perhaps.

    Like

  114. Luther Perez asked:
    Greg –
    I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
    While I am inclined (but not certain) to believe you are sincere in this request and am humbled by your interest friend, I don’t have a newsletter. I’m just a man of God with actually biblical and historical convictions. A dying breed among Calvinists it heartbreakingly appears

    All I have is my “BLOG” which really only functions as a text editor and proofreading tool for my posts on other people’s blogs. I’d like to believe there is some worthwhile thought there. Much prayer and study goes into everything I say in an attempt to faithfully represent my beloved Jesus whose name is being polluted by all the swill of the world being smeared on His beautiful face by those claiming to be His.

    This site is certainly not alone in that campaign. The particular station and stature of the “landlord” makes it especially useful to me though. When I tell people about the godless devolving degenerating morality in what was once high Presbyterianism, they practically call me a liar. I point them over here. Case made. I never hear another word of protest.

    Feel free sir to say whatever you like at my place if ever the inclination were to arise. Unlike Erik, who threw me out of his because I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want his family to see the way he treats his wife online, (I pray for them both from the depths of my heart) it would take an AWFUL lot for me to censor or ban anybody. This is a benefit of living in agreement with the word and will of the king of the universe as maintained by the historic Calvinistic churches until the end of the 20th century. By the gracious favor of a sovereign electing God I have nothing to fear and nothing to hide. I sleep like a baby. How bout you Erik?

    Erik says: The wife and I watched “Disconnect” last night, a film that touches on this very topic.”
    Another full course of fornication and profane blasphemy. Right up your alley Erik. Your faithful stewardship of the wife of your youth continues to greatly inspire as well. I’m sure you will Him say “well done my good and faithful servant” when your protection and husbandry of His precious daughter is brought before His tribunal. Just think of your rewards as the endless flood of filth and blasphemy and sickness and violence that you fed her is laid open for all to see. Crowns in abundance I’m sure.

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  116. My parents love to tell the story of how they and a few other young Pentecostals sneaked themselves to watch The Ten Commandments, in theaters. You see, the missionaries who were responsible for their Pentecostal training, were ex-Presbyterian fundamentalist, who kept their views of the cinema and the theater.

    In the 1970s, an army of ex-Missouri Synod Lutherans, were the Sunday school teachers in my corner of the Assemblies of God world. And they drilled the 5 solas into our head while warning us of the sin of liberalism. Their felt paper dolls on cloth board filled my mystical dreams…and liberals scared the hell out of me. We watched the Ten Commandments on VHS and Thief in the Night on film.

    Today, my parent’s AofG congregation has waterslides and bouncers during Sunday school.

    I love me the frozen chosen, but ex-Missouri Synod Lutherans were way more fun, but they may have been the slippery slope.

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  117. I’ll say this; Internet porn has spared us all from the aesthetic eyesore of dusters. This sanitizing has a cost though, just like there is nothing quite like the high you’d get off a dirty needle, video just lacks the raw character of film. If our vice loses all it’s visceral appeal, then from whence comes the titillation? Just as marriage ruins sex, so too, the internet has ruined the allurement of glossy slicks and fishnet stockings in the window.

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  118. Luther – My parents love to tell the story of how they and a few other young Pentecostals sneaked themselves to watch The Ten Commandments, in theaters. You see, the missionaries who were responsible for their Pentecostal training, were ex-Presbyterian fundamentalist, who kept their views of the cinema and the theater.

    In the 1970s, an army of ex-Missouri Synod Lutherans, were the Sunday school teachers in my corner of the Assemblies of God world. And they drilled the 5 solas into our head while warning us of the sin of liberalism. Their felt paper dolls on cloth board filled my mystical dreams…and liberals scared the hell out of me. We watched the Ten Commandments on VHS and Thief in the Night on film.

    Today, my parent’s AofG congregation has waterslides and bouncers during Sunday school.

    I love me the frozen chosen, but ex-Missouri Synod Lutherans were way more fun, but they may have been the slippery slope.

    Erik – Postwar Christian Americana at its finest.

    What was the Callers’ number again?

    If Luther is a chain-yanker I commend him on his work.

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  124. James Wolcott on his interaction with 70s porn in his excellent memoir, “Lucking Out”:

    In Part Four – “Bodily Contact” – Wolcott turns his attention to the seemingly incongruous subjects of seventies porn and his unexpected romance with – wait for it – ballet.

    He begins the chapter with the story of a female friend who knew her marriage was over when she came home and found her husband watching a porn movie with his brother:

    “I shared my friend’s revulsion – I hadn’t met her husband but had always assumed he was a snake, based on credible hearsay coming mostly from her (she is now happily remarried) – but for me the real mind-boggler of the story was that this skink had been watching a porn move with his brother. I have three brothers of my own, and I couldn’t imagine settling in with a snack tray and watching a wankeroo with any one or any combination of them – how tarantula-crawling, the very idea. What if mom found out? The very prospect made one crinkle inside. No, I maintained a more traditional attitude. As far as I was concerned, porn was to be enjoyed solely within the privacy of your own shame and guilt, or among strangers, unable to identify you from police suspect photos.

    That’s how the seventies raised me, one of the enduring values they endured.”

    Why porn? Wolcott explains:

    “As with punk, my formal indoctrination into the porn funnel had begun with a Village Voice assignment. I was doing an essay on the eroticization and exploitation of young girls that puddle-jumped from Lewis Carroll’s photographs to Lolita to Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver to Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby to wherever the last station stop in the piece ended up being. I needed to check out rumors that illegal underage porn was being openly sold in Times Square adult video stores and started scouting the aisles. It didn’t take much scouting.”

    The work on the article appears to have led to at least a mild form of porn addiction for Wolcott:

    “I filed the piece, a responsible-toned cultural-reporting essay that avoided tabloid sensationalism and easy moralizing (it was not a subject suited for flippancies, that I knew going in). But after the article was printed I continued dropping into Times Square (and by ‘dropping in’ I mean just happening to be in the slummy vicinity after making a trip expressly for that very purpose), making the irregular rounds of the theaters enough to be as up on the latest trends in smut as a racetrack tipster.”

    He goes on:

    “I intermittently haunted Times Square and it haunted me, the place exerting a pull even as it deadened the nerves, nerve deadening being part of the pull. Porn has all the attributes of junk, wrote Norman Mailer, and I interpreted his use of ‘junk’ not simply as a synonym for trash but as a slang term for heroin and any other hook-sinking hijacker of body and soul.”

    Wolcott makes the point, humorously, of course, that porn addiction may be even less socially acceptable than substance addiction:

    “I was once at an AA meeting in which one of the regulars received a customary round of applause for saying how long he’d been nicotine free, yet another for having giving up caffeine, but when he topped it off by announcing it had been three months since he had masturbated to porn or images in his head, I was the only one who began to clap, stopping my hands in midair.”

    Eventually Part Four shifts from porn to ballet and Wolcott tells us how he became a somewhat unlikely devotee, given his background:

    “Perhaps ballet personified all of the nice things denied me up to then (by no one in particular, by the luck of the draw), things I thought I didn’t feel I deserved, and in certain moods still don’t. Without realizing it until the fug was washed off my windshield, I had grown up Beauty-deprived, a word I’m capitalizing to differentiate it from the beauty of a flower or the beauty of a sunset or the beauty of a smiling face or any of those other Kodak moments to paste in our memory books and tell ourselves are enough; and they’re not. They’re not genius-blessed. They’re not Bach, they’re not Balanchine, they’re not Geoffrey Beene.”

    Of seeing Baryshnikov for the first time he says:

    “It was there that I saw Baryshnikov’s first rabidly awaited performances and received a tutorial in star power as paradigm shifter.”

    At the conclusion of the chapter Wolcott reveals:

    “I go to the ballet now. I’m married to a dance critic, something that just had to be, and in the corridors and lobby and on the balcony overlooking the Lincoln Center square and geysering fountain, there are different girl dancers shadow-boxing now, marking what they’ve just seen, and yet they’re the same girls, replenished. I love being able to look at them with unwanting eyes and careful not to look too long, looks so being easily mislaid.”

    http://literatecomments.com/2014/01/06/lucking-out-my-life-getting-down-dirty-in-seventies-new-york-by-james-wolcott-is-a-lot-of-fun/

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  127. Erik, the recommendations on the right side of the youtube page were very scary, i’m gonna have nightmares over them…

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  128. I was dragged to JC Superstar, THE MOVIE!!!! when I was 7 and I may be oversensitive to 2nd commandment violations, even before I knew that was what to call them.

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  129. Erik Charter – If Luther is a chain-yanker I commend him on his work.

    Luther – I’m part of a collection of academics who believe that if one studies Christianity in the United States one must understand the nuances and subtleties of Protestantism. And if one were to study the nuances and subtleties of Protestantism(s), one must understand Anglo-Protestantism in the United States. The debates and trends within Anglo-Protestantism has an effect and influence on Black and Hispanic Protestants.

    Like here’s a little tidbit of regional cultural norms coming into conflict among young Protestants of color. Southern Pentecostals wore their religion on their sleeves and demanded that folks recognize titles and roles. While Midwestern Pentecostals seemed to think those things were too “showy” and titles (Dr., Rev., Mr., Mrs) were too formal. It seemed there was a cold war over these little cultural norms, using us as the battleground.

    Another example? WEB DuBois, a pretty hardcore Marxist and Atheist in his later life, had quite a bit to say about the legalistic Southern Baptists he would meet at Black Universities. He was also hostile to the “mystical” Sanctified Movement gaining popularity within the Black Communities. Now, his critiques are usually attributed to his Marxist atheism, but he had engaged those two Protestant traditions/movements prior to his atheism,…so what was he using to compare and criticize them? I believe that his Massachusetts Congregational roots made him look at legalistic Southern Baptists and mystical Sanctified/Pentecostal a particular way.

    Another interesting point, about 5-7% of Mexicans converted to Protestantism (prior to the inroads Pentecostals make in the 1960s), but as Chicano historians point out, Protestants are over represented in Mexican intellectual life. Some say because Protestants focus on The Book…maybe….but I believe there are social and cultural capital that is gained that would change the way they engage with Anglo-Protestants. Among Black, Hispanic and Native American Protestants, there was a hierarchy of denominations that was identical to the hierarchy of Anglo-Protestants.

    The term “Afro-Saxon Protestant” used to be a sarcastic way to say “trying to be White” but recently the term has been embraced by Black Brits and some Black American academics here in the US. Basically suggesting that there was no “trying” but they were/are “doing” because they are Afro-Saxon Protestants. But because White had become an essential aspect to Anglo-Protestantism it almost seems comical to insist on a “Black Afro-Saxon Protestant” or “Anglo-Hispanic Protestant”.

    If English is the language you exist within and think in…and Protestantism the religious/spiritual world you operate within, as well…you’re not “trying” you kinda ARE. Most of us (non-White Protestants) could never leave the Protestant fold, we have taken on the trends and disputes as our own.

    Another example (or maybe tension) of this is the understanding of the term WASP. For Jewish and Roman Catholic Whites, WASP had a class component tied to New England aristocrats …while Protestants of color recognize poor WASPs (many of whom were part of the Sanctified/Pentecostal movements). I think Jews and Roman Catholics assimilated themselves differently by virtue of their “whiteness”, while Protestants of color dealt with a whole set of different issues.

    I am currently TAing a class “Intro to Islam” with a prominent American Muslim scholar (Sunni, African American who grew up Apostolic in Philadelphia), he goes further and teaches that the Nation of Islam had used as their ideal man, or at least man to emulate, was a WASP academic. Sober, articulate, frugal, prudent and stoic were the attitudes. The uniform, the bow tie and crisp white shirt and dark suit were what they believed was essential to become successful in the US. NofI introduced a new way of being Black Afro-Saxon Protestant, while maintaining ones “Blackness” The WASP academic was supposed to eliminate the poor Scot-Irish influence many poor Black Southerners’ picked-up.

    As an aside, my Professor is pretty adept at knowing his Protestants and I was embarrassed by how much Machen he knew (in other words he knew more than I did). He absolutely loves Christianity and Liberalism. The Professor is no liberal, but he keeps Republicans at arm’s length. But we both agree, that sometimes “whiteness” “protestant” and “Christianity” can be too broad, when understanding the cornucopia (or Funhouse?) that is American Protestantism.

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  130. I mean, whether you agree with or like Keith Green and the book and film Dare to Discipline (among other things like Thief in the Night),…if you knew what they are…. it marks you as part of the popular Protestantism of the 1980. …Maybe, a particular type of ethnos one is in? I don’t know….still trying to figure this crap out sociologically.

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  133. My participation here was virtually inadvertent, at least initially. People were discussing their common hobby, and I occasionally listen to people talk about their hobbies even if they are not my own. I did get a vague sense that, for at least one person, a discussion about the relative merits of TV is somehow beyond the pale. Maybe that kind of thing happens, as I have suggested, in a dialectical tension that begins with a fundamentalist ban on such things continues with an over reaction to that attitude, and instills an abiding suspicion that anyone indifferent to TV must be a fundamentalist at heart. Hence a new orthodoxy could, ironically, become intolerant to arguments against TV.

    I spent some time reading Ellul’s Humiliation of the Word yesterday. Some or all of it is here: http://www.religion-online.org/showbook.asp?title=499 . I think he tends toward hyperbole at times, but he’s often stimulating and worthwhile. He does not urge image teetotalism (as if that were possible) but does raise a number of points about the way we interact with visual media as well as its impact upon our thinking and emotions. In an age of instagram and phone cameras, it may be more relevant than when it was written. You may find it persuasive or not but it is certainly no fundamentalist rage.

    Maybe that’s a conversation for another time, maybe not. But that, as well other ways to talk about visual media, should not be shouted down.

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  135. In college I didn’t get “the medium is the message,” but after 10 years of working in journalism I got it. As a photographer I had a difficult time watching movies without being distracted by effects, lighting techniques and errors, flaws, etc. Not everyone goes through this, but the technique and the media itself can overpower the content, script, story. A movie, in that sense, is always just a movie. The medium is also largely about formula. Every big budget action film has the same set pieces. A quiet little book about hobbits and dwarves (mostly) walking around singing and chatting becomes a non-stop one-precipice-to-another, noisy spectacle. Every sappy American TV show seems to have the same soundtrack, and the formula now must include one character with a bizarre visage — a visual hook. The media of TV and movies seem to demand noise, action, and hooky images. Give me something more boring, please.

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  137. After reading Postman years ago, I signed off on the validity of the charge that serious, thoughtful, analytical, constructive analysis, to say nothing of the incongruity with education, was oxymoronic when teamed with TV, and the pairing of religion and TV is quite simply destructive of the faith. Thus, the vacuousness of TBN, EWTN, FOX, CNBC, MSNBC, and why something like the Daily Show has been able to trump them all as a ‘viable’ news source. What I think TV can do well is entertain. And when that is all we ask of it, we can be discerning consumers. To the degree TV or visual media is a time suck and advances at the expense of the written word? I don’t know, grow up. Use the ‘off’ button. Try self-discipline. Find a good writer. There’s just as much waste chasing entertainment or education from poor writers, teachers and communicators as there is demanding or using TV or visual media to do something it’s ill-equipped to do.

    Bad TV like bad writing are both boring and undeserving of my attention.

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  139. Chorts, you’ve helped me understand why I click on so few youtube links – the medium is intense. So if I read about Pastor Mark having bizarre visions, the verbal medium slows me down enough that I am able to analyze the story (not that it needs a ton of analysis) and then move on to the next story. On the other hand, if I watch him talk about it in a video, I’m screaming on the inside while the image of Pastor Mark in his goofy t-shirt burns a hole in my brain. So what did I do that day? I dunno, all I remember is pain and an image of Pastor Mark.

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  140. M, just stick to those Lifetime movies. They’re just warm baths of of soothing man-hate. There will probably be one soon about Driscoll or Phillips. Or why not roll them up in to one — a road trip to Wilson’s Moscow. I can see it now…waitress, flee for your lives!

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  141. “Lives” was a typo but in the bad Lifetime movie spirit let just say the victimized waitress is a schizophrenic and is alternately drawn to/repelled by our favorite misogynists. And there’ll probably be some amnesia thrown in, too.

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  142. Sean, agreed on the oxymoron of educational TV. How about just better and worse forms of entertainment? That way, Sesame Street survives (even if its producers think a little too highly of their work). But death to TBN.

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  143. I still haven’t figured out which is a worse omen; I hear the Hallmark Channel on when I come home or Lifetime. They both are ripe with possibilities. Of course the other alternative is show tunes. And while seriously diminishing my T levels at least is generally adorned with dancing, singing and a good mood.

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  147. Mitch – I did get a vague sense that, for at least one person, a discussion about the relative merits of TV is somehow beyond the pale.

    Erik – Thanks for the vague sense. Next time I need one of those I’ll ask a woman.

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  148. I think I’ll start a blog called “(Blank) Sucks”. People can just come and tell everyone what they think sucks.

    Sports – They suck

    Stamp Collecting – Totally sucks

    Marriage – Pretty sucky

    Religion – The ultimate in suck (with sub-blogs for each suck-laden faith)

    Fine Dining – kinda sucky

    Movies – Sucks the big one

    Smoking – Sucking a cigarette sucks

    Or maybe I’ll just start a blog about what I like and not give a crap what anyone else thinks about it.

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  149. “Thanks for the vague sense.”

    The phrase was actually a charitable euphemism. And here I’d like to say something witty and defusing, but all I can say is I need to leave this conversation to get a few things done.

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  152. AT&T finished installing a VRAD down the block in late December and they’ve been banging on our door regularly ever since, trying to get us to sign up for U-Verse. Trouble is, while I wouldn’t mind having higher speed Internet access (as opposed to this snail’s pace 768K symmetrical DSL download), they require at least a basic subscription to TV service first as part of their “bundle.”
    I neither want nor need it. In this broadcast area we can get something like 40 channels OTA with just an antenna in the attic. Movies we get on DVD via a monthly subscription to Netflix.

    Reason I bring this up is so I can thank you all (or ALL you all if you’re in the South) for reinforcing my dislike of “cable” TV service with the blog threads on this subject.

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  153. Micth

    The disappointing thing about this whole exchange is that you have chosen to argue against a Straw Man (Loony Toons, Letterman’s Stupid Human tricks, Katy Perry, etc.) instead of against things I’ve cited and asked you to respond to (The academic study of serious works of mass media, classic films like the Godfather, etc.)

    The reason it’s disappointing is that it is the approach that people take when the person they are arguing against is not a friend, but a foil against which one just wants to win an argument.

    Now we all do that at times against people we don’t know or care to know, but when we do it against our wives, our kids, and our Christian friends it’s a serious problem. Why? Because we might end up “winning” the argument, but in the end we end up “right”…and alone. That is tragic and is a fate that probably awaits way too many “solid Reformed” people.

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  156. Rightly did McLuhan term media as “extensions of man”. Erik’s sure acting like he’s been kicked in the extension.

    And I know that I haven’t participated here long enough to pull off that crack without looking cheap, but it was too delicious to pass up. Blame a youth crammed with Looney Tunes; such was mine.

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  157. Erik (whose comments I almost always appreciate greatly): The reason it’s disappointing is that it is the approach that people take when the person they are arguing against is not a friend, but a foil against which one just wants to win an argument.

    d4: Do you think that might be a tendency inherent to participation via this medium?

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  163. d4v34x – Do you think that might be a tendency inherent to participation via this medium?

    Erik – I do, but I think in the core group of 2K-minded Old Lifers we’ve been able to avoid this level of antagonism thus far. I thought we had agreed to move on until Mitch revived it at 6:47 a.m. this morning:

    “I did get a vague sense that, for at least one person, a discussion about the relative merits of TV is somehow beyond the pale. Maybe that kind of thing happens, as I have suggested, in a dialectical tension that begins with a fundamentalist ban on such things continues with an over reaction to that attitude, and instills an abiding suspicion that anyone indifferent to TV must be a fundamentalist at heart. Hence a new orthodoxy could, ironically, become intolerant to arguments against TV.”

    Once somebody reappears in my Dojo I’m not one to let it pass:

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  165. Basically, my position is on this issue of visual media vs. print media is that everyone can talk about it from whatever angle they like — just leave me, or any thinly veiled references to me, out of it. I would be more credible as a foil if I didn’t have a library of several thousand books and if I hadn’t sold probably 10,000 books on ebay over the past 14 years, but whatever.

    My eBay: Summary Member id charthead1 ( Feedback Score Of 6644)

    If D.G. brings up a TV show or a movie for discussion, if I’ve seen it, I’ll discuss it. If someone doesn’t like that D.G. brought it up, complain to him. If someone doesn’t like my comments, as D.G, would say, pound sand.

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  167. the vacuum at the car wash
    that takes four quarters
    really sucks

    that’s a good thing
    like the end of the Grapes of Wrath
    sucking that does not suck

    back one page
    to Erik’s vague generalizations

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  168. Mark – like the end of the Grapes of Wrath

    Erik – Read the book as a younger man. Liked it. Watched the movie after that. Liked it.

    Steinbeck is a pretty middling writer over all, though.

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  169. Erik, Steinbeck’s East of Eden was a significant catalyst in ny own learning, when as a teenager, I was exposed to it. It led me to keep reading and learning.

    You might be right, but we Northern Californians dig him, perhaps with a degree of bias.

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  170. AB,

    I haven’t read that one. “Grapes of Wrath”, “Of Mice & Man”, “Travels With Charlie”, “Cannery Row”, “The Moon is Down”, and “Sweet Thursday”.

    When I first started collecting books I got a nice copy of “The Red Pony” that I still remember.

    He is from your neck of the woods.

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  172. I think that BB should be made into an opera, with libretto by Alice Goodman and score by John C. Adams. It could have a blues motif, in minimalist mode. BB evokes fascinating connections, bringing to mind both the blues (as in B.B. King) and orthodox theology (as in B.B. Warfield).

    In all seriousness, I do think that to critique BB employing credibility as a chief criterion does, as some have averred here, mistake its genre. It’s like making fun of Il Trovatore. The Verdi opera does have a contrived plot, but one that seeks to make some points rather different than the later verismo will. Besides that plot, it has some of the most lyrical music GV ever wrote, as long as one takes Rigoletto into consideration as well.

    I like many styles of music, as well as other forms of art, but that doesn’t mean that I am a relativist who eschews aesthetics. Not at all. I try to judge something within its proper genre. Judged within its genre, I think that BB is rather remarkable in some ways.

    Everything cannot be reduced to taste (there are, in every field, standards of excellence to consider). But taste does also come into the picture and in that respect I would say de gustibus non disputandum est.

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  174. Erik: run this past someone on this board that you trust, or to someone else outside of OL. Show them your comments, starting with what you said to Puddlegum or whomever. Show them mine. Ask them for their reaction to how you have handled this. Sometimes a different set of eyes can see things we don’t.

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  176. Mitch,

    No thanks. You can do what you want with it. What starts here and is conducted here gets settled here as far as I’m concerned. There are already plenty of Reformed pastors and elders who view these discussions.

    Bringing uninvolved people into online dustups just brings (probably deserved) rebukes for debating in that environment in the first place.

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  178. Dr. Strange,I saw Phantom of the Opera,on Broadway, when I was a kid.

    That’s all I’ve got. Yours is a world I dont inhabit and would only make myself look silly trying to speak in any meaningful way on.

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  179. And my response to “Puddlegum” (am I really responding to someone named “Puddlegum”?) was based on his weighing in solely based on his viewing of “clips”.

    This is like someone entering into a debate on the Greek & Hebrew text of Scripture armed with Eugene Peterson’s “The Message”, or coming into court with “Law in a Nutshell”.

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  180. Alan, I have actually seen an opera and did enjoy it quite a bit. It was The Crucible, performed just south of Des Moines by outside talent. But it would be a lonely and expensive thing to cultivate from where I sit.

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  181. Mitch,

    I frankly don’t see anyone riding to either of our rescues so you can either drop it, as I thought you said you were willing to do, or you can keep referring to me in veiled and/or straightforward ways and we can keep going.

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  183. Most television sucks. But some television programs (i.e. The Wire) are excellent. But even the term ‘television’ is becoming murky and almost meaningless. You need to distinguish between network television, cable television, and channels like HBO. And now there is Netflix. Etc. The different structures of these different forms change the possibilities of the message because they are almost different media. To dismiss visual forms like these as entirely inferior to the written word (or whatever) doesn’t seem necessary.

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  184. At OL, everything circles back around. From a review of “Son of God”: “It’s heavy-handed and melodramatic, openly sentimental, and extremely earnest. ‘Son of God’s earnestness is not necessarily a strike against it; it was made by earnest people…”

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  185. I’ve seen a couple reviews of “Son of God” that refer to the lead character as “sexy.” Ugh. With a nod to Francis Schaeffer, think of Jesus as having a Son of Godishness, How is that perceived? Not visually. The scriptures have a few descriptions of physical appearance, but nothing on Jesus other than Is. 53 which speaks of his ordinariness. Perhaps a lesson to be learned here is that Son of Godishness is not in his image, whether it is a painting, a sculpture, or a movie. Any attempt to communicate it in that way is thus doomed to mislead and, in our culture, result in that particular actor being the one to play the part. It tells us something about us but nothing about him.

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  187. Luther Perez
    Posted February 27, 2014 at 7:14 pm | Permalink
    Erik Charter – If Luther is a chain-yanker I commend him on his work.

    Luther – I’m part of a collection of academics who believe that if one studies Christianity in the United States one must understand the nuances and subtleties of Protestantism.

    Pleased to meetya, LP. That’s my interest too. Imagine my surprise when I found the American Founding was lousy with Calvinism.

    http://www.davekopel.com/religion/calvinism.htm

    After you hang with these guys for awhile, you see why England was quite happy to give them all the land they wanted…somewhere else.

    ;-P

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  188. Tom Van Dyke,

    If you are still around, some interesting stuff:

    Blum. Edward J. (2005). Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press.
    Bruce, Steve. (2000). Conservative Protestant Politics. New York, Oxford University Press.
    Kaufman, Eric P. 2004. The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America: The Decline of Dominant Ethnicity in the United States, London: Harvard University Press.
    Prothero, Stephen (2003) American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
    Zubrzycki, Genevieve. (2006). The Crosses of Auschwitz: Nationalism and Religion in Post-Communist. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Barkan, Elliot R. (1995). “Race, Religion, and Nationality in American Society: A Model of Ethnicity–From Contact to Assimilation.” Journal of American Ethnic History, pp. 38-101.
    Blau, Judith R., Kent Redding and Kenneth C. Land. (1993). “Ethnocultural Cleavages and the Growth of Church Membership in the United States, 1860-1930” In Sociological Forum, pp. 609-637.
    Coleman, Simon. (2005). “An Empire on a Hill?: The Christian Right and the Right to be Christian in America” In Anthropological Quarterly, pp. 653-671.
    Hart, Daryl G. (2001). “Mainstream Protestantism, ‘Conservative’ Religion & Civil Society” In Journal of Policy History, pp. 19-46.
    Hart, Daryl G. (2004). Deconstructing Evangelicalism: Conservative Protestantism in the Age of Billy Graham. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
    Friedland, Roger. (2001). “Religious Nationalism and the Problem of Collective Representation” In Annual Review of Sociology, pp. 125-152.
    Gans, Herbert. (1994). “Symbolic Ethnicity and Symbolic Religiosity: Towards a Comparison of Ethnic and Religious Acculturation.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 17 pp. 577-592.
    Kaufmann, Eric. (1998). “Naturalizing the Nation: Nationalism in the United States and Canada” In Comparative Studies in Society and History, pp. ??.
    Kaufmann, Eric. (2000). “Ethnic or Civic Nation: Theorizing the American Case” In Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism, pp. ??.
    Kaufmann, Eric. (2003). “Modern Formation, Ethnic Reformation: The Social Sources of the American Nation” In Geopolitics, pp. ??.
    Lee, Timothy S. (2009). “What Should Christians Do about a Shaman-Progenitor?: Evangelicals and Ethnic Nationalism in South Korea” In Church History, pp. 66-98.
    Yuval, Israel. (2006). “The Myth of the Jewish Exile from the Land of Israel: A Demonstration of Irenic Scholarship” In Common Knowledge, pp. 16-33.

    Dorrien, Gary. (2008). “Niebuhr and Graham: Modernity, Complexity, White Supremacism, Justice, Ambiguity.” In The Legacy of Billy Graham: Critical Reflections on America’s Greatest Evangelist, edited by Michael G. Long. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.
    DeYoung, Curtiss Paul, Michael O. Emerson, George Yancey, Karen Chai Kim. (2003). United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation as an Answer to the Problem of Race. New York: Oxford University Press.
    Emerson, Michael O. (2006). People of the Dream: Multiracial Congregations in the United States. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
    Heltzel, Peter G. (2009) Jesus and Justice: Evangelicals, Race and American Politics. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press.
    Kidd, Colin. (2006). The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture In the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600-2000. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
    Prothero, Stephen Ed. (2006) A Nation of Religions: The Politics of Pluralism in Multireligious America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

    Barton, Paul. (2006). Hispanic, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists in Texas, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
    Díaz-Stevens, Ana-María, and Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo. (1998). Recognizing the Latino Resurgence in U.S. Religion. Boulder, Colo.: Westview.
    Maldonado, David Jr. Ed. (1999) Protestantes/Protestants: Hispanic Christianity within Mainline Traditions. Nashville: Abingdon Press.
    Sanchez-Walsh, Arlene M. (2003). Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Self, and Society. New York, Columbia University Press.

    Hunt, Larry L. (1999) “Hispanic Protestantism in the United States: Trends by Decade and Generation” In Social Forces, pp. 1601-1624.
    Leon, Luis D. (1999). “Metaphor and Place: The U.S.-Mexico Border as Center and Periphery in the Interpretation of Religion” In Journal of the American Academy of Religion, pp 541-571.
    Ortiz, R.L., (2009). Preserving Identity: Puerto Rican Shifts from Catholicism to Pentecostalism. Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College, City University of New York.
    Stohlman, Sarah. (2007). “At Yesenia’s House…: Central American Immigrant Pentecostalism, Congregational Homophily, and Religious Innovation in Los Angeles” In Qualitative Sociology, pp. 61-80.

    Like

  189. Is this where Frank Sobotka worshiped?

    Rev. Ray Bomberger prayed after twenty-five-year-old Freddie Gray died of a severed spine, an injury he sustained while in police custody. Bomberger prayed after Gray’s funeral on April 27. And he prayed as rioters took to the streets outside his church that night, setting fires, breaking windows, and tossing rocks and bricks at police officers. Then, early Tuesday morning, he got to work.

    Bomberger runs St. Peter Claver, a 126-year-old Catholic Church in Sandtown-Winchester. Sandtown, one of the most blighted areas in Baltimore, was also Freddie Gray’s neighborhood. More than 30 percent of its residents live below the federal poverty line; 21 percent are unemployed. About 450 are in state prison right now—the highest number from any census tract in Maryland. The life expectancy of those born in Sandtown is thirteen years shorter than the national average. Those are problems that can’t be fixed by one man, or in one morning. So instead, Bomberger grabbed a broom and headed across the street. The windows of Wonder Land Liquor had been smashed. Looters took what was useful (alcohol, mostly) and left the rest strewn on the sidewalk.

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