Category: Music
Book Review: The Classical Revolution by John Borstlap
By Jeremiah Lawson In a time when the President has openly questioned what the United States get from being in NATO and fears that Russian and Chinese influence threaten the stability of the Atlantic American-European order, now would not seem...
Book Review: Music as an Art by Roger Scruton
By Jeremiah Lawson As a written practice, Western music goes back at least a thousand years. Over the centuries music has been made in the service of churches and courts, and from roughly the eighth through the thirteenth centuries was...
Reading the Hymns: Joy to the World
By Steven Wedgeworth Though it is today one of the most popular Christmas hymns, “Joy to the World,” was not originally a Christmas carol at all. Written by Isaac Watts, “Joy to the World” originally appeared in his 1719 The Psalms...
Mary Did You Know? A Mere O Symposium
By Christian Young, Susannah Black, Jon Coppage, and Jon Askonas Today we will be discussing a much loved, but also much hated, Christmas song, “Mary, Did You Know?”
Hamilton, Meritocracy, and Patriotism
I held out for as long as I could. My resistance was sustained chiefly by a stubborn contrarianism that resists as many trends as possible, particularly those that can be credibly connected to New York City, Washington, San Francisco, or Los...
A World Where Love Can Be at Home–Josh Ritter and Francis Schaeffer
“Christianity should never give any onlooker the right to conclude that Christianity believes in the negation of life.” — Francis Schaeffer I’ve often wondered what might happen if Josh Ritter, one of my favorite modern songwriters, were ever to meet Francis...
The Best U2 Recordings You’ll Hear
For your Saturday listening pleasure come two songs from U2 that no self-respecting fan should go without hearing. The first is With Or Without You. A famous song, yes, but this live version includes a bridge (taken from the Book...
Understanding vocation, humanity, and politics through the metaphor of music
Maya Angelou says he “thinks like a sage, acts like a warrior and writes like a poetical prophet.” Henry Louis Gates, Jr. says he is “the pre-eminent African-American intellectual of our generation.” And Marian Wright Edelman says he is “one...
The Double Entendre of African-American Music: A Lesson for the Church
Music has undergone serious theological neglect according to Jeremy Begbie, a professionally trained musician and theologian at Duke Divinity School. In his introduction to Theology, Music and Time, he writes: In the twentieth century, the corridors of theology were not...
Soul Music, or Plato Was Right
There is no better or faster way to out yourself as a curmudgeon than to pick on the music that kids are listening to, especially if you do it without the ironic and self-mocking flair that my generation has perfected....