Category: review
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Review: The Genius of Israel
Listening to Kan English news has become a morning habit. I wake up at 4:30 AM in San Francisco, thirty mins after the 2:00 PM newscast is sent out from Israel. After Morning Prayers, during coffee, I have time to listen to Naomi Segal or Arieh O’Sullivan fill me in on what’s happening in the…
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We did not even know there was one.
FOLLOWING THE ADVICE OF the CFR podcast your host went on a binge of used book buying. Footnotes in books lead to other footnotes. I mentioned back in September that I was reading Ralph Martin’s Hungry for God. One of the footnotes there suggested I should read Did you Receive the Spirit? by Fr Simon…
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Salvation through the Vales
WHO GETS SAVED HERE? Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) and then Tina Durrance How is this salvation accomplished? Charlotte falls in love and directs that love to something good, sacrificing herself to save Tina as well. There’s a lot here that can be worked with. Charlotte’s relationship with her mother (Gladys Cooper) seems to be beyond…
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Salvation & John Wayne
This essay was part of a project in 2004 called “Salvation and the Silver Screen“. It was intended to be a bunch of Orthodox bloggers watching old movies and then commenting on the theological content. I WATCHED THE BEST MOVIE last night (that is, in 2004), The Angel and the Badman (Republic, 1947). It is a John…
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Salvation in All About Eve
This essay was part of a project in 2004 called “Salvation and the Silver Screen“. It was intended to be a bunch of Orthodox bloggers watching old movies and then commenting on the theological content. Best laid plans… I don’t remember why the other folks didn’t make posts. “I have taken a wife, I have…
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My Two Jesuses
I was very surprised to discover my LiveJournal account was still around. This is one of my favorite essays (from 7th May 2004). I’ve updated it a tiny bit and edited it a good bit because I hope I write at least a tiny bit better now than then. Any time one tries to tell…
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Resist. But not what you think.
NEIL POSTMAN’S TECHNOPOLY has been a slow-go for me, although I think I’ve had it for about a year. It’s hard reading a fully-valid cultural critique of your industry (and your quarter-century career arc) that was written before your industry or the possibility of your career arc existed. To say Postman was a prophet is…
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The World, the Flesh, and All About Eve
20th Century Fox’s 1950 masterwork, All About Eve, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (who also wrote the screenplay) and produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, is a classic of Christian theology. Staring Bette Davis, Gary Merrill, Anne Baxter, Celeste Holm, Hugh Marlowe, Thelma Ritter, and George Sanders, at least for the purpose of the credits, it…
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Book Review: The Shepherd Who Didn’t Run
Hagiography is a tricky thing. What you say can be nearly eclipsed by what you do not say. I have a friend who was served in a leadership role in a Protestant denomination. After his death, many folks talked about his fierce loyalty: but few mentioned how his fierce loyalty blinded him to the failings…
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A Dangerous Book
Popular histories can tend to be strident, combative affairs: they carry on arguments on and off their pages, and come with definitive points of view. People love them or hate them. They divide readers and reviewers into camps of good and evil based on reaction to the book. This is very different from scholarly history…
Orthoparadoxy 