When I give talks based on Desiring the Kingdom, I often revisit my analysis of the mall as a consumerist cathedral. The concreteness and universality of the experience is usually a helpful entrée into the core concepts of my liturgical analysis of culture. A couple of resources to add to that analysis: When I was…
I was 15 years old when “Born in the U.S.A.” was released, and even those of us in Canada couldn’t evade its impact and allure. This was also the era of the emerging ubiquity of the music video, so Courtney Cox’s cameo in the “Dancing in the Dark” video is forever emblazoned on my memory….
A friend pointed me to this article on the “Mall-ification of America”–which dovetails with my analysis of the mall’s liturgies in Desiring the Kingdom, particularly highlighting the assimilation that happens when we naively adopt what we (wrongly) think are “neutral” forms. Consider these concluding paragraphs: There is some data to go on, though: According to…
When I give talks based on Desiring the Kingdom, I sometimes try to crystallize the philosophical anthropology at the heart of the book in this way: “If I really want to know who you are, I’m not going to ask what you know. I’m not even going to ask what you believe. If I really…
Every technology is attended by a mode of bodily practice. So even if the computer is primarily an information processor, it can never completely reduce us to just “thinking things” because it requires some mode of bodily interface: whether we’re hunched over a desk, glued to a screen; or looking downward at a smartphone, our…
In giving talks around the country about Desiring the Kingdom, one of the themes I regularly press is the refusal of any form/content distinction when it comes to Christian worship. This is central to my argument: when I claim that Christian worship forms and orients our loves, it’s not just any old version of Christian…