I am speaking at a wonderful conference where I will argue that the Christian story is so powerful that even very talented people like Joss Whedon cannot borrow from it without being controlled by it.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a deeply Christian show . . . despite vain attempts to hijack the vampire myth from its Christian roots. In any case, I get to define myth using Plato, look a bit at Stoker, and Dante so what is not to like? Here is the punch line of my paper:
Ever feel like things are getting worse? Afraid your values are for yesterday and that all the power is in the hands of tyrants?
Fear not! It has been worse. . . imagine being a Greek or a Jew at the end of the fourth century . . .
Socrates begat Plato, Plato begat Aristotle, Aristotle begat Alexander and the world of the classical Greeks came to an end. Alexander destroyed the old order but replaced it with nothing stable. The Mediterranean world entered a strange shadow time in the period from 323 BC to 30 BC almost waiting for the coming of the Romans to reunite and give direction to its history.
Alexander from Macedonia was not an ethnic Greek, but his father Philip had worked hard to make him culturally Greek. 
His father had also laid the foundation for the conquest of the Greek city-states that had proved impossible for the mighty Persian Empire. Alexander completed this project and prepared to strike against Persia. In this way he could compensate the Greeks for their relative lack of freedom by helping them strike against their ancient enemy. In his short career, Alexander swept away Persia and ended the pattern of one eastern empire succeeding the next to power in Mesopotamia. For the first time the center of cultural gravity had plainly shifted to the West.
An American in Paris . . . and Britain X
British people often laugh at American Christian reverence for C.S. Lewis and American Christian academics are generally sensitive to this laughter. Nothing makes an 
American academic more insecure than the well modulated sneers of his British counterpart. Americans are (it appears): loud, overly religious, patriotic in a brash way, and uncritical of their own nation. Lewis was from that sad period of British history when too many Brits were also jolly, pious, proud of their island nation, and willing to fight for King and country. Lewis is a bit of the crazy old uncle who managed to survive the Second World War only to linger too long. If he had lived longer he would sneered at Blair’s Britain making sarcastic comments about “Cool Britannia,” the Millennium Dome, and other far reaching cultural changes.
(more…)
An American in Paris . . . and Britain IX: On Seeing Julius Caesar: Shakespeare and the Noble Tyrant
Hugo Chavez rolled up to the podium at the United Nations and did what modern tyrants in the making do.
He ranted and he roiled up the crowd by hating George Bush, but he fed nobody, helped no one, and gained nothing.
He is the people’s god, of the moment, hated by the worthless rich of his own nation, though the fact that bad men hate him does not wash him clean of his sins. Stalin’s hatred of Hitler did not make Hitler one bit less wicked, though Stalin was a very wicked man. And yet there is some part of America that wants to believe in Chavez . . . our home grown left moans after him this generation as their grandparents did after Castro. He is so forthright, so manly in his bright uniforms, and so sure that he can flog the rich and help the poor . . . and everyone knows the poor in Venezuela need helping.
This story is why elaborately constructed reasons that Pope Benedict XVI was wrong in the most recent flap with radical Islam are wrong.
Radical Islam wants no criticism of its major figures or of its truth claims.
I do not believe that we should gratuitously insult persons others revere. There is no place in a multi-cultural society at war for thoughtless offense.
Christians live in a public square where they are happy to defend the freedom of atheists to state their views about the divinity of Christ. The free and open society built mostly by Christians over the last two hundred years demands this. We respect those who disagree enough to engage in polite and reasoned discourse.
But we will not give up our right to make reasonable, but tough arguments against ideas we think are bad.
As usual the story is in plain type below and my comments are in italics:
Stonehenge is a good reminder that early English culture was, well, primitive. Compare Stonehenge to the Roman baths in Bath. 
Christianity was good for England. It added no new problems, cured many old ones, and was capable of change under pressure.
I have read the Pope’s address which stirred up so much fuss which seems to be more than many American papers are willing to do.
The obvious question is to wonder about how easily our foes are baited by a very clever pontiff. Is there a radical Moslem with a sense of irony? When they threaten to kill the Pope for “saying” that they are violent, don’t they get a bit concerned about how that appears?
My new idea for capturing Bin Laden is for President Bush to announce that if he does not come out of hiding soon that he is a big, fat scared-y pants. Bin Laden is sure to do it on the same swift reasoning being shown by radicals in the Middle East today.
The second less obvious set of questions hinge on fears about media education when some American papers and reporters are shocked to discover that (perhaps!) the Pope believes Islam is wrong. Next they will be discovering that Catholics send out missionaries to offer people the chance to convert to Christianity and not to Islam! Ever!
(more…)
She turned and said with a thoughtful manner, she always had a thoughtful manner, “Books are no longer the literature of our culture. Movies are now way the masses receive truth.” So a seminar speaker, long ago, introduced me to the idea that perhaps literacy is a thing of the past. We are, she proclaimed, “a post literate people.”
If I accept this, I still wonder at accepting it. For some reason, we are to rejoice in it instead of combating it. This is deemed progress so it must be opposed, but there is nothing progressive about it. It is simplest to see it as a return the slavery of illiteracy.
Even the phrase “post literate” is nonsense. Christians have always taught people to read. God, after all, sent a book not a video. We did not let the pagan Irish wallow in their symbols of other gods rudely painted on stone walls. Why should we let the pagan Americans sink back to pictures flickering on modern walls?