Reviewed Elsewhere [Vol. 1, #40]
David Fitch Reviews Andy Crouch’s Culture-making
http://www.reclaimingthemission.com/2008/10/to-all-missional-artists-seeking-to.html
As some might know, I have a complaint concerning the way evangelicals engage culture. The way we engage culture is either to reject it all or embrace it all. Our culture habits, I contend, have been formed under a 50 year Niebuhrian hangover where we view culture in singular unilateral terms. To compound the problem, we regularly make Jesus Christ into a principle to be translated (or not) into it (instead of concretely embodying his way into the world). This is the influence of Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture.
Culture is more complex, multiple and diverse than that. It is ubiquitous as well. It cannot be escaped. And Jesus the Christ is not a principle but an historic incarnation of the second person of the Godhead. God began his work in the world (Missio Dei) by actually entering into the world for the reconciliation of the whole world to Himself. To be His people, is to engage the world in all its complexity for the incarnation of the gospel via the formation of a people. This people, is a cultural expression of the Holy Spirit as an extension of God’s Missio begun in the sending of the Son.
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Read the full review:
http://www.reclaimingthemission.com/2008/10/to-all-missional-artists-seeking-to.html
Culture-Making:Recovering Our Creative Calling
Andy Crouch
Hardcover: IVP, 2008
Buy now [ Doulos Christou Books $16 ] [ Amazon ]
Dan Smith has engaged in a Chapter-by-Chapter
Conversation with ELECTING NOT TO VOTEhttp://blog.ndansmith.net/2008/10/14/electing-not-to-vote/
ELECTING NOT TO VOTE
Ted Lewis, ed.
Paperback: Wipf and Stock, 2008
Buy now [ Doulos Christou Books $17 ] [ Amazon ]
FIRST THINGS reviews Daniel Siedell’s
GOD IN THE GALLERY:
A CHRISTIAN EMBRACE OF MODERN ARThttp://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=1197
In a recent book assessing the state of evangelical scholarship, Mark Noll refers to “a boomlet in evangelical art history [that] rests squarely on the work of the Dutch Reformed scholar Hans Rookmaaker.” Had Noll seen Daniel Siedell’s book God in the Gallery, he might have thought differently. Siedell is a long way from Rookmaaker, and his book—whether or not it can be called evangelical—is no boomlet. God in the Gallery is an impressive detonation in and of itself.
The Christianity-and-art conversation is gridlocked. The stalled traffic includes those who are profoundly suspicious of the art world, and those who are infuriated enough by this unforgivably “conservative” suspicion that they, in turn, write contemporary artists a theological blank check. A book capable of broaching this impasse has long needed to be written—but who would have suspected it would be this good? What makes God in the Gallery noteworthy is that it addresses another gridlock as well, that of contemporary art. The traffic in this case involves those liberated by the end of modernity to explore spiritual directions, and those committed to keeping art a staunchly secular enterprise. “The art world,” insists Siedell, “is growing increasingly uncomfortable with its collective unbelief.”
Siedell’s qualifications enable him to address both these dilemmas. He is a firmly ecclesial Lutheran with deep—one might say overriding—sympathies for the Orthodox Church. In addition, Siedell holds a Ph.D. in contemporary art (he studied with noted critic Donald Kuspit), and he is a seasoned curator with a decade of gallery experience.
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Read the full review:
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=1197
GOD IN THE GALLERY:
A CHRISTIAN EMBRACE OF MODERN ART
Daniel Siedell
Paperback: Baker Academic, 2008
Buy now [ Doulos Christou Books $20 ] [ Amazon ]
