Addenda
A monthly e-mail newsletter from MARS HILL AUDIO
March, 2007 – Number 37
"I may be wrong about this, but it seems that Christian lyricists these days
appropriate the victory before they carry the Cross; or they will rejoice that
Jesus bore the bitter wood for our sins, but do not consider that every one
of our sins was a thorn upon his brow, or a jagged stone to cut his feet
as he fought his slow way up to the Skull Place."
-- Anthony Esolen, "A Sign of Contradiction,"
on Touchstone magazine's Mere Comments blog, March 31, 2007
New on our desks
The New Whateverism in Art
Art critic Jed Perl (writing in the February 5, 2007 issue of The New Republic) observes that "We have entered the age of laissez-faire aesthetics." The ruling assumption of this age is that "any experience that anyone can have with a work of art is equal to any other." [Read more on The New Whateverism]
Chantal Delsol, The Unlearned Lessons of the Twentieth Century: An Essay on Late Modernity trans. by Robin Dick (ISI Books, 2006)
In The Unlearned Lessons of the Twentieth Century: An Essay on Late Modernity, French philosopher Chantal Delsol describes the spirit of the age, what the age has inherited from modernity, and wherein lies hope for the future. Delsol notes that modernity, the age of totalitarian regimes, has left man with little hope for the future and little hope in institutions. [Read more on The Unlearned Lessons]
Housekeeping as Liturgy
One of the paradoxes of contemporary life is that homes are equipped with labor-saving appliances and yet people do not have time to cook and care for the home and its members as did past generations. . . . In a lecture given recently at the Center for Christian Study in Charlottesville, Virginia, professor Margaret Kim Peterson examines this paradox and establishes a theological framework explaining the importance and practice of keeping a home economy. [Read more on Housekeeping as Liturgy]
Volume 84
If you receive your subscription on CD, we are sorry you haven't yet received volume 84. We've had production delays with this issue from both the company that prints our listener's guides and the company that duplicates the CDs, which means the CD version of 84 is running about a week or two late. Most of the CDs were shipped the last week of March and the remaining batch will be shipped the first week of April. You should have your copy by the end of April; but if May arrives and you're still looking for volume 84, please call 800.331.6407 and we'll send a replacement. We apologize for the delay!
The Humanity of Jesus
". . . Jesus was not incidentally human, but deliberately, necessarily, thoroughly. And by taking our nature to himself he has set a divine seal upon human life. If we seek to understand our humanity we must do so henceforward with one eye upon his. He it is who had led the normative human life, the single life that has resisted sin; and offered to God the perfect sacrifice—which we never can—of a life obedient to the Father at every point. Not only so. By taking human life into the very godhead, he has hallowed human existence and asserted afresh and forever the worth and the dignity of bearing the image of God."
—Nigel Cameron, Are Christians Human? An Exploration of True Spirituality, now available as a MARS HILL AUDIO Book (http://www.marshillaudio.org/human)
Thinking about Work Christianly
One of the persistent themes of our work is the danger of various forms of dualism whereby the "spiritual" is pitted against the "material." Such dualism takes a lot of forms. For some, the work of Christ in redeeming us has nothing to do with our lives in the messy world of space and time. For others, the Gospel informs our everyday lives, but only in guiding our temperament or attitude; Christian belief affects our manners, but not the substance of how we ought to live. For many Christians, there is a wall separating Church and Work. For such people, the 9-5 jobs they have are simply a means to a paycheck, a mechanism enabling sheer physical support and financial support of churches and other Christian ministries. There have been a number of books by Christian writers challenging this sort of dualism, books that develop the Christian idea of "vocation" as a perspective on work. Two such books were written (almost a decade ago) by Paul Marshall (A Kind of Life Imposed on Man) and Os Guinness (The Call). Interviews by Ken Myers with these authors resulted in Life Work: On the Christian Idea of Calling, one of our MARS HILL AUDIO Conversations.
In the course of this Conversation, Marshall and Guinness discuss why Christians are tempted to have too low a view of work, dismissing it as "sub-spiritual," how we ought to see work as a function of God's providential care for all things, and how we sometimes can have too high a view of work, thinking that leisure and play are bad things.
Until now, this Conversation has only been available on cassette tape. Today, we are releasing it in a digital download format, playable on your computer, on any MP3 player, or burnable to a CD. The price is just $5, and the content is quite durable. We think it would be especially helpful for college students, who often seem prone to the sort of dualism we're trying to combat (and who are, providentially, very much at home with MP3 files).
If you'd like to order a copy of this Conversation for yourself or for a vocationally puzzled student, call us at 1.800.331.6407, or go online to http://www.marshillaudio.org/catalog/conversa.asp#con13. You'll note that it is still also available on cassette.
The Ascending Voice: An International Symposium of Sacred A Cappella Music
Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, is hosting a symposium of a cappella music June 4-7, 2007. The Ascending Voice: An International Symposium of Sacred A Cappella Music will include lectures and clinics, public performances, a recital of new hymns, and panel discussions, all on the theological, historical, and musical richness of a cappella traditions. Symposium planners are calling for paper and hymn submissions. For more information about the symposium, including details about submissions and registration, visit www.pepperdine.edu/provost/conferences/ascendingvoice/; or call (310-506-4261) or e-mail (provost@pepperdine.edu) Darryl Tippens, Pepperdine's provost.
Transforming Spaces: Virtu(e) and the Virtual
Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA) is hosting its biennial conference June 14-17, 2007, at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania. Speakers for the event are Ken Myers, Ena Heller from the Museum of Biblical Art, and Catherine Kapikian from Wesley Seminary. For more information about the event or CIVA, call 978-867-4124, e-mail office@civa.org, or visit www.civa.org.
Subscriber Update
Volume 85 (March/April 2007) of the MARS HILL AUDIO Journal is scheduled for production next week. Guests include: John C. Sommerville discussing his book The Decline of the Secular University; Christopher Shannon on Conspicuous Criticism: Tradition, the Individual, and Culture in Modern American Social Thought; Matthew Dickerson on Ents, Elves, and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J. R. R. Tolkien; and Michael G. Lawler on his essay "Marriage As Covenant in the Catholic Tradition" published in Covenant Marriage in Comparative Perspective.
Various Details, Disclaimers, Etc.
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Copyright 2007 MARS HILL AUDIO, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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MARS HILL AUDIO
P.O. Box 7826
Charlottesville, Virginia 22906
Call 1.800.331.6407
Fax 1.434.990.9090