Archive for the ‘Popular Culture’ tag
Amish Grace & Pop Culture
Amish Grace Cover
Film depicting Nickel Mines shootings questioned (Cindy Stauffer, Lancaster Intelligencer Journal, 03/01/2010) ran on frontpage in south central PA the day after Donald Kraybill, one of the authors of Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy, spoke for the Emerging Scholars Network in partnership with Elizabethtown Brethren in Christ. If you’re interested in learning more about the Amish, I’d encourage you to
- listen to Kraybill’s 2/28/2010 presentation on The Riddle of the Amish (the audio begins with my brief introduction of Kraybill).
- pick-up a copy of Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy — coming out in paperback later this month. Note: the Amish Grace web site is a rich resource and All author royalties are going to Mennonite Central Committee for their ministries to children.
- visit the Amish Studies web site — maintained by the Young Center for Anabaptist & Pietist Studies, Elizabethtown College
How should followers of Christ respond to this popular culture depiction of the Gospel, academic research, and a minority group which desires as a people of God to be separate from popular culture.
Should we
- contend that certain forms of media can never do justice to events/material such as what is found in Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy
- post comments on the film’s website and other locations which encourage dialogue
- stand up against what appears to be a misuse of film rights to the title of a well researched book, it’s content, and those whom it represents
- turn the other cheek by neither entering the public fray nor watching the film
- watch/discuss the film
- watch/discuss the film only after we’ve read up on the Amish or are led in consideration of the film by someone who can provide insights regarding the Amish
- seek to produce more films/documentaries closer to the facts/truth, e.g.,
The Amish: Back Roads to Heaven (which ends with a brief summary on the Nickel Mines tragedy), The Amish: How They Survive, The Amish: A People of Preservation - other?
Note: Lifetime‘s website for the upcoming film is here and the trailer can be found here.
PS. ESN’s Week-in-Review will hit the web on Saturday morning.
