2011‑2022, and is preserved here for archival purposes.
What kind of culture will Pentecostalism produce? There has been a lot of talk lately among scholars about the rise of Pentecostalism as a global force. Much of it is focused on the implications of Pentecostalism on the church, the state, and the economy—sociological talk—but not, to my admittedly limited knowledge, little is focused on the impact that Pentecostalism will have on arts culture.
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Ian Hunter asks his literary friends, The Wrinklings—and Convivium readers—to decide whether King Lear is a Christian play.
Since I first read King Lear as an undergraduate nearly 50 years ago, I have never doubted that it is the supreme achievement in English literature. It would be difficult to name two 20th century writers more dissimilar than George Bernard Shaw and Malcolm ...
But if political Doyle deserves the fate of fictional Clancy's foes in the famous song from Jack Benny's 1940s radio show, TV critic Doyle is one of the most perspicacious fight pickers in the Globe and Mail's pages. Doyle made the point that he brings to his TV critic's role not only a wealth of journalistic experience but also a Master's degree in Anglo-Irish Studies from University College, Dublin. It was not braggadocio. It established his bona fides as a writer steeped in the milieu of the masters of English literature.
Whenever Globe and Mail TV critic John Doyle gets my Irish up by straying into politics, I pray that Clancy will lower the boom boom boom on him.
But if political Doyle deserves the fate of fictional Clancy's foes in ...
In addition to being able to say truthfully how much it influences influencers, he was clearly pleased by the significant dollar value of advertising revenue it generates each year. It's an understandable reflex. There is a tendency to associate "niche" publications positively as specialist, selective, coterie catering, or negatively as small, obscure, audience averse—a Royal Family philatelist semi-annual, for example, whose cover stories target the demographic excited by postage stamp images of the Queen with one eye half closed.
Late last week I was chatting with the editor of a Canadian think tank publication who sounded apologetically proud of how well his magazine is doing.
In addition to being able to say truthfully how much it influences influencers, he was clearly plea...
In the midst of this cleaning of cobwebs and repointing of masonry, the book of the law—the other cultural pillar of the people of Israel—is re-discovered. The accidental nature of the find reads like an event that occurs when one cleans the dusty attic of a grandparent who has stored odds and ends there for years. The king's secretary says, "The priest has given me a book" as if he hasn't a clue of its importance.
There is a passage in the Old Testament book of Kings where the temple of God—the cultural centre of the people of Israel—is given a thorough cleaning and refurbishment after years of desecration and abuse.
In the midst of this cleanin...
Apple's iPad is a small and easy thing. Apple's iBooks is a small and easy program. Put them together and you are able to get, as I discovered during Christmas, more than 7,000 pages of G.K. Chesterton for a mere $1.99. From Heretics to Orthodoxy, from the Crimes of England to the Innocence of Father Brown, The Club of Queer Trades and the magisterial essay on Dickens, it's all there and, of course, all good.
Great progress is best measured, I think, in the splendour of small and easy things combining to make the good available to all.
Apple's iPad is a small and easy thing. Apple's iBooks is a small and easy program. Put them together and you are able to...
Yet its very treatment spoke volumes about the robotic mindlessness of modern media bigotry toward Christian faith and Holy Scripture. The winner, a nine-year-old from Salem, Oregon, took home $100,000 in prize money. It was the second year in a row that Olivia Davis has won the competition. According to her mother, quoted in the story, the youngster spends four hours a day in the summer on Scriptural memory work.
It was handled as an oddball newspaper wire story to be played as filler back behind the truss ads, as we used to say.
Yet its very treatment spoke volumes about the robotic mindlessness of modern media bigotry toward Christian faith and Holy Scriptu...