The Evangelical Manifesto
On the remote chance that you may not already have read it, I should post the news that An Evangelical Manifesto was published and presented earlier this week, on May 7.
The Steering Committee for the document includes…
- Timothy George
Dean, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University - Os Guinness
Author/Social Critic - John Huffman
Pastor, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Newport Beach, CA
Chair, Christianity Today International - Rich Mouw
President, Fuller Theological Seminary - Jesse Miranda
Founder & Director, Miranda Center for Hispanic Leadership, Vanguard University - David Neff
Vice President and Editor in Chief, Christianity Today Media Group - Richard Ohman
Businessman - Larry Ross
President, A. Larry Ross Communications - Dallas Willard
- Professor of Philosophy, University of Southern California
Author
And, via Ross Douthat, here are responses to it by:
Alan Jacobs (here, and here) and Michael Brendan Dougherty. Other responses will be posted here as fast as I become aware of them. (Well, almost as fast.)
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Two Soderberghs and a missing Kiarostami: early rumblings about Cannes 08
I’m two weeks behind on posting this, but it’s too tantalizing to ignore. Here’s Robert Koehler musing about the lineup for this year’s Cannes Film Festival…
Just look at some of the filmmakers in the roster, and you’re looking at a window on the future of cinema: Alonso and his Thierry del Fuego-set Liverpool, Albert Serra and his Three Wise Men odyssey El Cant dels ocells, Claire Simon’s Les Bureaux de Dieu, Raya Martin and his five-hour Now Showing and the best Romanian you haven’t heard of–Radu (The Paper Will Be Blue) Muntean and Boogie.
He concludes with:
…a mystery: Although Abbas Kiarostami’s Shirin was expanded into a feature based on the short he contributed to Cannes’ Chacun son cinema and Kiarostami, is, well, Kiarostami, he’s nowhere to be found in the lineup. Any lineup. Why isn’t it in Cannes? What happened?
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The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers
Word is spreading fast about the next book by “God Girl” Cathleen Falsani, religion columnist for The Chicago Sun-Times. The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers will be a welcome focus on the quiet but everpresent spiritual questions at the core of the Coens’ films.
I met Cathleen Falsani, the author, at the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing a couple of weeks ago, and it was a pleasant surprise. I’ve been reading her work here and there for years. (I think I discovered her through Steve Beard’s Thunderstruck site.) She approached me after my Through a Screen Darkly lecture to tell me that she was glad I’d brought up No Country for Old Men in the presentation, and went on to tell me about the book. It sounds very cool, but she’s got another one coming out right now called Sin Boldly that looks interesting too. Can’t wait to read either one of them.
So, learn to make a White Russian, and you’ll be all set. When the book arrives, you can kick back every evening with a glass in one hand and Falsani’s book in the other, and learn to see the Coen Brothers through a new lens. (I wonder if the book will include Burn Before Reading, or if the printing will happen too late for that….)
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Neil Young versus the MP3
Ready for Harvest Moon on Blu-ray?
When Neil Young announced the impending release of his Archives on Blu-ray Disc earlier this week, he made it clear that there was a technical reason for his decision.
As well as making his entire back catalogue and a large amount of related items available in one collection of shiny discs, he was striking a blow against the MP3. “Putting on a headphone and listening to an MP3 is like hell,” he said. His aim is to give the audience “quality whether they want it or not. You can degrade it as much as you want, we just don’t want our name on it”.
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A hero will rise… to save the state of book reviewing
As book reviewers vanish from newspapers, will anyone stand up and offer a solution? Here’s a story of one controversial attempt.
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Marion’s mandibles
I don’t know about you, but are you getting unsettled by Karen Allen’s perpetual, ear-to-ear grin in the promotional shots for Indy 4? It’s kind of creeping me out. I hope Marion Ravenwood’s return to the Indy world will remind us of the tough-talking, punch-throwing dream girl who won our hearts in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Marion gone soft and smiley? Say it isn’t so!
neil young? with an opinion on something? say it ain’t so… 🙂
my take on the EM… i’m enjoying reading the various opinions here and there around the web. i had some hesitations and misgivings before reading the document, but i’m actually quite impressed and invigorated after taking in the whole of what it addresses.
one of the things i like is that the authors have chosen not to list creationism and inerrancy as non-negotiables. for the first, there’s very little biblical justification anymore behind whatever the latest flavor of anti-natural-selection dessert is being served up; for the latter, somehow we can admit that we can’t prove the existence of God, but goshdarnit we have a golden egg this unprovable God laid right here. still, some people hold to these positions; so be it. there’s simply too much of a tendency to add items to the ever-increasing laundry list of ideas and doctrines to which we have to pledge allegiance before we’re allowed into the room marked “Christian.”
nothing’s going to please everybody, and there are a few things i object to. for instance, i don’t agree with this statement: We Evangelicals should be defined theologically, and not politically, socially, or culturally. Jesus’ message uses “action” verbs: teach them to DO as I have commanded you, LOVE God and LOVE your neighbor, by this will all men know … if you LOVE one another. any theology that defines us must have feet.
i did, however, like these words: We are also troubled by the fact that the advance of globalization and the emergence of a global public square finds no matching vision of how we are to live freely, justly, and peacefully with our deepest differences on the global stage. somehow, we’ve got to figure out how we’re going to peacefully share the same bathroom over the next few decades in our ever-shrinking world.
one interesting thing: maybe i missed it, but there doesn’t seem to be a great emphasis on evangelism in this Evangelical Manifesto. do you think that was intentional? i didn’t see a single chick tract referenced in the bibliography…
more than anything, i find myself motivated and energized by the very positive nature of the piece – that it isn’t yet another “here’s everything we’re against” rant but an effort to make the gospel again a message of good news. imagine that – the gospel being good news. American Christianity has lost this defining characteristic that once served it well.
perhaps one unintended benefit of the proposal is a clear opportunity to take this EM (Evangelical Manifesto) and align it with the other EM (Emergent Manifesto) and finally have all our EM & EMs in a row without demonizing the other side.
one can only hope…
mike rucker
fairburn, georgia, usa
mikerucker.wordpress.com
THank you for the pointer to the Alan Jacobs response to the Manifesto. He’s always worth reading.