Fire and Knowledge

To a large extent, readers determine what gets published. They determine what books are stocked in bookstores. What readers are willing to buy, publishers and bookstores are happy to provide. The power of the marketplace is enormous, in literature as well as in the economy as a while. Although certain ideological factors do enter into publishing, distorting the process, by and large the public gets what they want. If sex and violence dominate the paperback racks, it is largely because readers are willing to pay for sex and violence. Conversely, if readers demand excellence, then they will find themselves swaying the literary world and thus the entire culture.

—Gene Edward Veith, Jr. Reading Between the Lines: A Christian Guide to Literature (1990), p. 214

The Greeks, of course, had developed drama from its origins in religious ritual into an exquisite art form. The Romans carried on the Greek dramatic tradition, but they began to depart from its cannons of taste and decorum. Whereas the Greeks forbade the portrayal of violence onstage, the Romans in their late decadence reveled in bloody spectacle. Roman drama degenerated to the point that condemned criminals would sometimes be made to play a part in a play. When the time came for a death scene, the actor/criminal would actually be killed. The audience no doubt was greatly amused by such a realistic touch. Today our special-effects technology is superior to that of the Romans, but out fondness for horrific violence in movies is no different morally or aesthetically.

—Gene Edward Veith, Jr. Reading Between the Lines: A Christian Guide to Literature (1990), p. 154

If you use the amazing and recommended Firefox plug-in Adblock, be sure to also install Adblock Filterset.G Updater. It automatically updates your Adblocker with the latest Adblocking definitions every 4-7 days.

What this means is virtually no more banner ads during browsing! I’ve been using Adblock for over six months now and I highly recommend it. It is another way to guard yourself against consumerism, psychological manipulation, and distraction.

Intelligence in the Internet age

Today, terabytes of easily accessed data, always-on Internet connectivity, and lightning-fast search engines are profoundly changing the way people gather information. But the age-old question remains: Is technology making us smarter? Or are we lazily reliant on computers, and, well, dumber than we used to be?

“The Educationist as Painkiller,” an article by Neil Postman originally published in 1988, is now accessible online for the first time. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the National Council of Teachers of English for granting permission to post the article to NeilPostman.org.

For more information on Neil Postman or to read more of his articles, visit NeilPostman.org.

Technology Use Is Growing Rapidly in Churches

Today six out of ten Protestant churches (61%) integrate video content into their worship services. That is double the proportion of Protestant churches that did so just five years ago. Incorporating live drama into worship services is also typical these days, with 62% of churches using such presentations in those settings.

In total, eight out of every ten churches uses either drama or video in their services. About one out of every five (17%) uses video only, one out of five uses live drama only (19%) and about two out of five (43%) use both. More than one-quarter of the churches in the Northeast (27%) and West (26%) use video but do not perform live drama. More than one-quarter of mainline churches (26%) use only live drama. The churches most likely to use neither form of communication are those with less than 100 adults (28%), congregations with a black majority (26%), those pastored by a female (28%), and those whose pastor is a Baby Buster (25%). Among the megachurches studied (1000 or more people), more than nine out of ten used both video and dramas….

“During the next half of this decade,” [George Barna] commented, “we expect increased broadband access, podcasting, and ubiquitous adoption of handheld mobile computing devices by consumers to further alter the way churches conduct ministry”….

“As church staff and congregational leaders become more comfortable with, and dependent upon new technologies for communication, they are expecting their church to stay relevant in its capacity to convey messages in ways that are common in our culture…. The discovery that a majority of small churches have either a website or a big-screen projection system to facilitate their ministry shows that new technology applications are now considered to be required tools for effective ministry in the third millennium.”

Of course, with the increase of video technology adoption, churches who provided “pew Bibles or Bibles people can borrow during a worship service” decreased 6% in five years. Expect that number to continue dropping. Churches are one of the last places where the Word is still exalted. When even the church gives way, who will be able to resist the Image?

In today’s world of materialism and cynicism, a major obstacle of belief is the difficulty of imagining anything that transcends what the senses can perceive. Christianity speaks of mysteries, of absolute goodness locked in a cosmic battle with Satan, of eternal ecstasies—all of which go far beyond the constricted, empty universe of physical objects that our culture assumes is all there is. The problem with many people today is not that they have intellectual objections to Christianity—our age is anti-intellectual to begin with—but that their imaginations are so impoverished that they cannot even begin to conceive of anything spiritual. They have become incapable of recognizing the awe and wonder of holiness. Their imaginations need baptizing.

—Gene Edward Veith, Jr. Reading Between the Lines: A Christian Guide to Literature (1990), p. 140

Bad nonfiction garbs simple ideas in overly complex language or scientific-sounding jargon. It is wordy. It sounds ugly. One has to read it over and over again to decipher it. Such writing is arrogant in its pseudo-learning and in the way it neglects its readers’ needs. Bad writing is usually impersonal; that is, it lacks a human voice and speaks of human beings as if they were only numbers or machines. The droning, lifeless jargon of much modern writing—like a computer idiotically spitting out data—is a product of the mechanistic worldview that dominates our time. Christians, bound by their faith to affirm life and the Personality who underlines all of reality, should never imitate that sort of prose.

—Gene Edward Veith, Jr. Reading Between the Lines: A Christian Guide to Literature (1990), pp. 52