I liked the comments about art and music. Some of the most beautiful and inspirational art was commissioned by the Catholic Church during the Renaissance. Yet nothing like is done now.
Churches need to reach out with art, music, and video to the people. And not this baby food pablum they are serving now, but real art and drama that people relate to.

Great interview. But I’d never put Big Love in the same category as Hustler. Big Love is a soap opera, for sure, but it takes conservative religious feeling seriously. See Ross Douthat’s thoughts on Big Love for more.
I love her overall message, that excellence in the arts is so important.

“I think that politics can clear the field for good to be done, but I don’t think it actually achieves anything. I think culture is what creates good in the world.”
boy, this seems like a gauntlet thrown at the feet of conservatives.
okay, so you hate government. oh, but there is a viable alternative; ‘culture’.
but for a lot of conservatives, ‘culture’ is more scary than the gummint. so you can either choose one or the other, or you’re now fighting a two-front war.
and so conservatives love the free market, right? so if the southwestern united states is becoming latinoized, isn’t that the free market (in a cultural context) at work? but then to resist the cultural spread of latinoization would require either direct discrimination on a personal street level, or running back into the arms of that hated gummint to keep free cultural exchange in check (with things like border patrols and anti-hijab laws.)
so if you negate gummint and also culture as a positive force in the world, an enforced theology may be one of the few powerful incentives left to pitch. are you cool with that?

Let me say first that I’m not against political involvement. I think some people are “called” to politics just as some people are called to more traditionally religious vocations. It’s important to be as informed as possible for one’s season of life, to vote, to be a good citizen, etc.
That said, a nation’s political atmosphere is merely a symptom of the inner life of a collective people. Christianity claims to be in the business of changing hearts and lives for the better. If Christians as a group wants true and lasting change in their nation, and in the world, we must pour our focus into investing in people–individuals. Changed people equal a changed world. Mere political muscle might superficially change things for a short time, but it won’t bring lasting transformation.
The thing is that investing in people is a slow process that takes patience, grace, and time. Political activism is exciting, and sometimes brings fairly rapid “results.” Christian activists often prefer the excitement of the fray to a quiet investment in others.
To use the far Right/Moral Majority/whatever you choose to call them as an example–They’ve been “fighting the culture war” for, what, 30+ years now? They’ve won some small skirmishes, but as a whole, the country has continued to barrel down the path that they’ve opposed so strongly. I imagine that if this group had spent an equal amount of time, money, and energy in loving their friends and neighbors and attempting to gently lead them to the life change they claim to believe in, they would have seen much better and more lasting results.
I know this is a simplistic view, but sometimes things aren’t as complicated as we make them.

A fine thought about arts and how it can be used to communicate religious feeling. The Sistine Chapel and Piazza San Pietro are truly inspiring sites.
Though many in the Muslim world don’t condone the use of imagery, architecture and Arabic calligraphy have been used to inspire the faithful for centuries – the SultanAhmet (Blue) Mosque in Istanbul and the Mezquita of Cordoba come to mind. And I was similarly awed when I saw the enormous Hasan II Mosque in Casablanca several years ago.

Excellent point regarding the lack of creativity in the church overall. If we serve the Creator, can we not trust Him to give us new and innovative ideas to reach the world? Social media like Facebook and Twitter should be embraced by the church instead of being considered dangerous.
It is hard to present the message of Christ as a better option if we are 10 years behind the curve and copying what the world does.

Wow. Just… wow.
The flaws in this essay are astounding. Occam’s Razor shoots down things like “Patron of the arts” used to be the moniker of the Christian Church[...] with a very simple because there was no other institution extant with the money, resources and cultural control to fulfill that role.
And while my assurance that my Pagan button is not being pushed, the following is egregious nonsense: Hollywood has a value of excellent production value, of talent, and the pagan world absolutely believes in talent, this mysterious gift that comes from they-know-not-where. We know where it comes from; they don’t know where it comes from, but they believe in it.
Hully gee, boss. The Christian God is the source of everything. Why are you boring us with the obvious? Well, this non-Christian (that being what I see as his intention in using “pagan”) knows precisely where it “comes from”, and your arrogant surrender of your humanity to a jealous God is not it. I’ll keep it in mind the next time I hear a Tuvan throat singer, see an Indian tribal dance, watch one of my pagan jewel-craft friends create a beautiful pendant or necklace. I’ll remember it the next time I watch six people practicing tai chi together, or a Buddhist Asian doing yoga, or encounter the beauty of a Shinto shrine.
Indeed, if I weren’t born and raised in a western culture, I’m pretty sure I’d not know what the heck he’s talking about.
I think it would be a good idea.
Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Mahatma_Gandhi/

Reading this piece, and the comments that follow, I am reminded once again that there is nothing that can be said or done that won’t cause immense hostility in someone toward the writer/speaker. That’s the human experience, I guess. But is it ever depressing, endlessly so.
Hatred is the currency of human interaction. And the really amusing thing about it is that enemies pretend that only the “other guy” is low enough to hate. Riiiight. Clear enough to me.
Whatever brings about human extermination, to the extent that it does so, must at some level be seen as an overarching virtue.

Dunno what thread you thought you were reading, Sam, but what I see in your post is a too ready decision to read disagreement and sarcasm as hate.
So, unless you are of that ilk who believe that any criticism of Christianity is tantamount to hate, perhaps you’d like to be specific in your assertions rather than what I am left to see as passive-aggressive.

I’d have to partially second Sam, actually, Franklin. I don’t think you’re showing hate, but you do seem a bit touchy. From the perspective of a Christian (the perspective of the writer of the essay), of course God is the source this “mysterious gift”. Many pagan religions and philosophies would concur: Zoroastrianism, Stoicism, Neo-Platonism, and arguably, depending on one’s interpretation, Daoism, Confucianism (c.f. tian and Shangdi), and some forms of Buddhism (the dharmakaya and Adi Buddha are an awful lot like the Logos). It’s also unfair to characterize Christianity in general or Christians in general as practicing “arrogant surrender of your humanity to a jealous God”; just as it would be unfair to blanketly characterize neo-pagans as “devil worshippers” (as they do in Appalachia) or “flaky New Agers” or anything else that I’m sure you’ve heard more than your fill of. We Catholics get a lot of it, too, here in the Bible Belt.
Having said that, I’d also say that anyone is free to come from any perspective that they like and that of course criticism of Christianity is by no means tantamount to hatred; and that non-Christians make all kinds of assertions about Christianity, as well. It’s not a Christian thing or a pagan thing–it’s a human thing. We all find it easy to make blanket statements about the Other, and we all are annoyed and unewilling to look for grains of truth in things the Other says about us that we may not like.
My point was that you are so often a voice of reason and moderation here that it seems a little surprising to see you in what appears to be an off mood. But it happens to all of us!

Boy, is this ever rich.
A charter non-Christian reader of this blog, having known its marquee proprietor for almost a decade to be not just a Christian but an Orthodox Christian, stands before us with hands on hips, outraged, outraged I tells ya, to see that proprietor advance for the 10,001st time on his own blog a central tenet of his faith, which, being such, is by definition exclusionist toward non-believers. And apparently, in witnessing our dissenter’s high dudgeon after Rumpelstiltskin, his wounded-virgin sarcasm, our host is expected to abandon the fierce beliefs of his entire adult life as a Christian, and lead the whole thread in an apologetic and ecumenical group hug, after which all will be forgiven as the snarling pagan lamb lies down with a newly shamed, apostate and de-balled Christian lion.
As if that weren’t imbecilic enough, Mr. Mock-Outraged can’t even get the gender right of the lady screenwriter (“his intention in using ‘pagan’”) above whose strictures on pagans set him to chewing entire cartons of Alka-Seltzer.
How dare Br’er Dreher advance Christian themes within his own blog posts! Whah, issa Jessah-Jackson-stahl OUTRAGE, ah tells ya!
So: we learned that a devout pagan finds the beliefs of a devout Christian exclusionist, and couldn’t wait to soil himself in telling us, tossing out in the space of one combox an entire carefully-cultivated decade-long reputation as a man of tolerant equanimity.
Like the man said, why is he “boring us with the obvious”?
Seems Mr. (selectively, like many another at the home-blog we once shared) “Tolerant” might want to season his paganism with a bit of Stoicism, dry his tears and effing grow a pair for the first time in his life.

Advantage: Turmarion, whom I now owe a 30-pack, by a Stonehenge mile.
I myself was tempted once to talk and snarl a man out of his religion, and in his own home – right before realizing that smashing my sack with a sledgehammer was a form of polemic far more pleasurable.

Hunter: The primary ways of thinking about the world and how it changes in our society are mainly incorrect. There is an answer to the question of how to change the world, but how it actually changes is different from how most people think.
When all you have are metaphors of war, the entire world seems like a battlefield.
And that’s just plain silly.
You oughta know by know – it’s love wot’s a battlefield.
Other than that, the world is our oyster, which we with sword, or His Word – or Pistol, the first speaker of the lines – Will (the Stratfordian author) open.
A message from Billy Joel, Pat Benatar, and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Actually, Scott, I give you the margin on this one. I’ll just take my wounded, inner curmudgeon and find someone else’s marbles to play with… which would appear to be following in your footsteps, eh? As for missing the change in voice and gender… mea culpa, and I’m sure I’m the only person to ever make that sort of mistake.
Turmarion, your moderate words run afoul of the exact thing that let my inner curmudgeon escape today: there is no such thing as like or similar. Either the culture is Christian and of God, or it is not, and of… whatever the source du l’an might be, from outright dominion of Satan to merely and mildly deluded. By the way, I will gently point out that I was in first-person voice at one point, and my “surrender” comment fits the context better if you see it addressed to Nicolosi-Harrington and not to Christians in general. I do concede that there is ambiguity there, but not enough to prompt me to change my phrasing.
Oh, and Scott… my tolerance does extend, in your case, to ignoring your argumentum ad hominem here, since that long and public acquaintance I share with the blog author here includes much evidence that I attack ideas, not people. If the purveyor of ideas finds offense in my sarcasm (or dudgeon, if you will), then heat and kitchen cliches would most likely come to my mind.

I’ll just take my wounded, inner curmudgeon and find someone else’s marbles to play with…
Actually, a curmudgeon is simply an apprentice nihilist lacking the courage of his fledgling convictions, deranged still by the infantile libido to win friends and influence people among the faint of heart and mind.
To adapt the sainted RFK, some among us, seeing a polemical house on fire, seek to fetch a pail of water; some others cry, why water when we have always about us a great flask of petrol for just such occasions? ‘Tis better to burn all such blazes to ash, the better to enjoy a good fireworks show, than to drown in the flood of hypocrites whose attempts to “help” only hinder those whose purposes are as at daggers drawn to their own.
heat and kitchen cliches would most likely come to my mind.
My thoughts here were put much better by Fr. Japus Gassalascus (Caleb Steagall), late of The New Pantagruel, in a post from 2005 (reprinted in 2009) titled – hey presto! – “If you can’t stand the heat”; WARNING: not safe for any Southern belles chancing to wander herein, to whom it might give a case of the vapors:
“To put it simply, people want to be able to say whatever they want and still feel accepted, liked, and respected. But the truth is that many opinions are worthy only of contempt, disgust, mockery, or at the least, disapproval. This is a well established characteristic of all classic and other pre-liberal modes of discourse.
“As Graeme Hunter noted of Pope John XXII’s damning and reproving of Meister Eckhart as ‘heretical, indiscreet and ugly,’
‘What pleases … about these words is not so much their truth, about which I am still undecided. It is their self-assurance, that hits you like a snort of vodka at a Baptist picnic. Even our previous and current pope, who stand above their age like giants, even they might learn a thing or two from such medieval predecessors.’
“It is a severe fact that one cannot take clear stands on many critical issues without expressing contempt for the deeply held convictions of others with whom one disagrees. The proper attitude toward a person or position one regards as contemptuous of, say, human life, is contempt—which need not preclude pity, fear, and even compassion. Anything less indicates one does not really take the matter seriously. It is always the fitting implication and sign of honesty in even the most ‘civil’ disputes that the disputants are clearly antagonists whose differences cannot be reconciled or infinitely deferred without there being a winner and a loser.
“This has always been the reality of ‘civil’ or political discourse. And when confronted with people who are so profoundly disordered so as to advocate policy that breeds individual and social disorder, the ‘difference’ is not a mere matter of ‘opinion;’ it is a deep spiritual difference of great consequence.
“It is one thing to issue ignorant and facile polemic; it is another to speak the truth and to occasionally decorate it so as to maximize rhetorical impact and advantageous political ends. For example, an ounce of quality sarcasm, bawdy humor at another’s expense, rhetorical exaggeration, and so on, is often worth a pound of argument. If you don’t believe me, you need only observe the common machinations of shrewd Machiavellian campaign strategists.
“Like it or lump it: the more heated politics of the day frequently merit returning fire with fire, firing pre-emptively, or deploying ‘nuclear options.’ Of course things can get out of hand, and one might be wrong in one’s thinking and choices—that is always the risk of any serious exercise of power. But short of the danger of touching off real, bodily conflict (which hardly seems a pressing risk), and absent the bonds of loyalty and fidelity and affection present in a real community (the internet is not your community!), I would not even consider erring on the side of caution. That side is also the side of false friends, dangerous appeasements, and emboldened enemies which leads, in the long run, to the entrenchment of hostile interests insulated from removal by normal political means.”
In other words, the “civility” so fetishized by the bien pensants is unlikely to make a comeback tour any time soon, whether in the ecclesiastical or the political sphere. And that, as the stylistic mistress of our age would say, is a good thing.

Found the quote I referred to in the CNN thread. It was from a column, not a blog. It’s by Robert J. Samuelson and I saw it Monday through a link in a comment at The New Republic under an article on polarization. (I had thought it was at Sullivan’s but it wasn’t). Samuelson wrote,
“Purging moral questions from politics is both impossible and undesirable. But today’s tendency to turn every contentious issue into a moral confrontation is divisive. One way of fortifying people’s self-esteem is praising them as smart, public-spirited and virtuous. But an easier way is to portray the ‘other side’ as scum: The more scummy ‘they’ are, the more superior ‘we’ are. This logic governs the political conversation of left and right, especially talk radio, cable channels and the blogosphere.
Unlike economic benefits, psychic benefits can be dispensed without going through Congress. Mere talk does the trick. Shrillness and venom are the coin of the realm. The opposition cannot simply be mistaken. It must be evil, selfish, racist, unpatriotic, immoral or just stupid. A culture of self-righteousness reigns across the political spectrum. Stridency from one feeds the other. Political polarization deepens; compromise becomes harder. How can anyone negotiate if the other side is so extreme?”
There are moments when it is possible to win in politics without going down that road. Just read any of the books about the 2008 campaign. But a lot of politics is about dispensing psychic benefits, often in the negative way Sameulson pictures. Religion and culture provide a different footing. In the modern age, people aren’t encouraged to work on boosting their self esteem by hating on those who worship differently or who enjoy different aspects of culture they do. Politics depends much more on name calling as a form of negative bonding to make people feel “good” about themselves, albeit in a way that often weakens them. Most of us would turn away from dating or employing anyone who displays the same qualities outside the political world—too much of a red flag, a sign of troubled relationships ahead. We turn instead to those with more secure footing and better foundations.

“But in the end, which is more harmful: true words cast in an ugly frame, or untrue words cast in a beautiful frame?”
The biggest problem lies in the way the political, unlike the religious, too often depends on evading, masking, and distracting from, problems. And in some cases, defending the indefensible. At its heart, there is a lack of humility, something which being religious demands. Look at how critics of the Iraq war were made to feel unpatriotic on message boards during the height of thw war. I saw comboxes where people screamed that anyone who opposed the war was a traitor and their speech was seditious. I tuned them out, it sounded silly and insecure to me. Much more effective in getting me to at least listen would have been for them to say, “look, we didn’t find WMD, I understand why that bothers people – a lot. But here are the benefits of our having invaded. . . .” That first step, of saying I understand why you argue as you do, is the one that often is missing in politics. It’s because some people view doing that as weakness, while others view excessive yelling and anger as weakness.
Religion encourages self awareness and reflection in areas which the political often would rather we avoid. There is no good answer for this because there are no generally accepted standards for political discourse. Some people are drawn to drama and crushing of opponents. They won’t see the value of saying, “I get where you’re coming from. Here’s why I stand.” It doesn’t fit their standards. Those who aren’t drawn to drama are put off by what seems like excessive emotionalism and lack of humility. It doesn’t fit their standards. Some areas are impossible to standardize. We don’t all marry the same type of people, we have different things we look and yearn for companionship. Same thing with what appeals to use in political discourse.

Politics is the branch of philosophy that addresses the question of how to form a proper society. It necessarily depends on ethics, the branch of philosophy that addresses the question of how to live a proper life. Determining how to live a proper life depends on what you think life is, i.e. your metaphysics. Storytelling aside, if you think human existence is a temporary state within an eternal ethereal consciousness; you form ethical and thus political conclusions different from those of us who think otherwise. See OPAR for more details.