Story, Lent and The Life of Pi

John Hundley —  March 6, 2013 — Leave a comment

lifeofpiLast week I wrote about The Oscars and Lent. I wrote that these two phenomena share more in common than is usually suggested.  Today I want to move in for a closer look–at the stories themselves. If this annual cultural ritual in honor of story (The Oscars) is so telling of our culture’s condition, and if we, as critically thinking Christians, want to understand and thus impact our culture, it may do us some good to examine its favorite stories. The Life of Pi is one such story.  With four Academy Awards, The Life of Pi was the most glorified film of the year.

But why? And what might its success tell us about our culture? Furthermore, do these stories actually influence the way we think and act? And, finally, how do the answers to these three questions relate to Lent? Continue Reading…

In Christ and the Academy , , , , , ,
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Best Christian Book of All Time: Early Nominations

Micheal Hickerson —  March 5, 2013 — Leave a comment
A potential dark horse for "best Christian book of all time"?

Shockingly, no one has yet nominated “How to Murder a Minister” by Pastor X.

The nominations are coming in for our Best Christian Book of All Time Tournament (BCBATT for short). So far, more than 140 different books have been nominated, ranging from the 2nd to the 21st centuries.

Here are a few of the books receiving multiple nominations:

  • Augustine, Confessions
  • Augustine, City of God
  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The Cost of Discipleship
  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
  • John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress
  • John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
  • G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
  • Dante, The Divine Comedy
  • Thomas á Kempis, Imitation of Christ
  • Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God
  • C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
  • C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia
  • J.I. Packer, Knowing God
  • Dorothy L. Sayers, The Mind of the Maker
  • John Stott, The Cross of Christ

We also have one nomination in the running for longest title: William Wilburforce’s A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. (No one has yet put forth William Carey’s An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, In Which the Religious State of the Different Nations of the World, the Success of Former Undertakings, and the Practicability of Further Undertakings, Are Considered. There must be something about long titles and 18th century British Christians named “William.”)

It’s not too late to nominate your favorite book. We’ll continue taking nominations until Saturday, March 9. The tournament bracket will be announced on March 17, and the voting will begin that week.

The Brackets

I’m currently thinking of dividing the books into 4 categories:

  • Classical and Medieval
  • Reformation Era (including pre-Reformation)
  • Modern
  • Poetry and Fiction

If you have other suggestions for ways to divide the books, I’d love to hear them.

Interested in Helping?

Once we’re down the final books, there will also be a special series of posts with capsule summaries of the remaining books. If you’re interested in helping write those or helping to seed the tournament brackets, let me know.

In Book Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Rituals of Annotation

David —  March 1, 2013 — Leave a comment
My tally marks. Kyrie eleison.

My tally marks. Kyrie eleison.

I am not exactly sure of what prompted me to do it, but I began keep­ing a tally of all the pro­nounce­ments I have done. A pronouncement is that act in which a doctor officially declares a person to be dead. Some deaths are theatric spec­tac­les involving beep­ing mon­i­tors, electric shocks, and crack­ing chest car­ti­lage. These tend to be chaotic, gritty, and conclusive as in the TV shows, sometimes ending with a dis­traught physician intoning, “Time of death. . . .”

However, most pro­nounce­ments done in the hospital are remark­ably simple and imper­sonal. Because we attach so much meaning to death and have sequestered it far from the public eye, we are conditioned to believe that its act must be as spectacular and monumental as its significance. But what usu­ally hap­pens is that the per­son will merely expire, often with nothing more than a quiet, gasp­ing sigh. It is usually expected but spontaneous, with a somber but quiet family waiting aimlessly for the event to occur. Some­times hos­pice arrange­ments are made for the patient to go home to die, sur­rounded by fam­ily and friends. Some­times a volun­teer in the hos­pi­tal will keep a vigil of sorts, sit­ting in a chair while read­ing a book or watch­ing TV as he or she does the job of those who have no family, waiting to ful­fill the simple courtesy of not letting any­one die alone. Some­times a nurse will make the rounds and dis­cover that the patient has passed in the few brief hours in between visits. Regardless, those final moments occur at any hour and in any floor of a large hos­pi­tal like mine. In every case, when­ever the death is dis­cov­ered, a page is sent to whichever res­i­dent is on call to stop by and make the offi­cial pro­nounce­ment. Continue Reading…

In Health Care , , , , ,
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