Currently reading: How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg 📚
I recently finished listening to the podcast series The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill by Christianity Today. Though it originally released in 2021 (and generated a considerable amount of buzz at the time), I somehow managed to delay listening until now. It’s well-produced and, best I can tell, pretty even-handed in its reporting. While I’m sure there are many lessons to draw from this cautionary tale (the host, Mike Cosper, tries to gesture throughout to larger dynamics that implicate us all), my overall impression by the end was that it’s not going to be easy to extrapolate generic principles from this unique story of implosion.
Elizabeth Newman, on not reducing Christian worship to a private affair disconnected from our socio-political lives:
The tendency to limit worship to a Sunday-only activity coincides with the assumption that worship has little to do with our political or economic lives, our lives in the “real world.” Yet as Hauerwas and Wells remind us, “Worship is, or aspires to be, the manifestation of the best ordering of that body, and is thus the most significantly political—the most ‘ethical’—thing that Christians do.” The turn to worship, then, is not a merely pious turn away from the real world for a few hours, but is instead a turn to the real world that is the body of Christ.
The problem with consumerism…is not first of all its materialism. Rather, consumerism underwrites a way of life focused on the subject’s satisfying herself through choosing things or experiences. Consumerism is a mode of aestheticism because it promotes the idea that through our choices we are creating our identity, our lifestyle, and the image we wish to project to others.
Kristyn and I watched The Godfather (finally)
my latest masterpiece
Austin
Currently reading: The Big Relief by David Zahl 📚
Currently reading: Waterloo by Karen Olsson 📚
Finished reading: How to Know a Person by David Brooks 📚
Brooks' recent work has really resonated with me, and this one was no different. I love the moral/spiritual trajectory of his work…happy to be along for the ride.