Choreography and Improv
by Peter J. LeithartDespite appearances, jazz and baseball are historically intertwined. Baseball players and jazz musicians both strive for a perfect balance between disciplined practice and spontaneity. Continue Reading »
Leonard Cohen, Religious Alchemist
by Sean CurnynCohen is an Old Testament poet who can comprehend the New Testament without great strain or contradiction. Continue Reading »
Suzuki Method Uberparenting
by Betsy VanDenBergheSpiritually as well as emotionally, childhood years require not only joy and nurturing, but also suffering and growth, if the young person is to face adulthood maturely. And fortunately (or ironically), our musically obsessed phase never ended up shielding my kids from anything. Continue Reading »
Music Man
by Peter J. LeithartReaders often find the opening chapters of 1 Chronicles stultifying. These pages contain list after list of names, with occasional mini-biographies thrown in to break up the monotony. Chronicles is hardly the first place we turn to for deep insight into human nature. Yet the fact that Chronicles . . . . Continue Reading »
Beyoncé and the Fertility of Forgiveness
by Leah Libresco SargeantThe most screenshotted sequence in Beyoncé’s visual album Lemonade is “Hold Up.” After discovering her husband’s infidelity, she walks down the street smashing storefronts with a baseball bat, finally crushing a row of cars in a monster truck. Viewed alone, the song seems like a simple . . . . Continue Reading »
Rhyme and Reason
by Rebekah CurtisHymns are chimerical critters. Their bodies are made of poetry, and their breath is music. The natural ligature of these beasts is rhyme. But sweet rhyme has fallen on strange times in both poetry and music. In poetry, rhyme is terribly out of fashion. It has come to serve more as a rhetorical . . . . Continue Reading »
Prince: Dance. Music. Sex. Religion.
by Stephen NiezgodaIʼm twenty years old, maybe twenty one. Weʼre four deep in my little two-door Saturn, on our way back from a show in the city. Itʼs late. I canʼt remember who played, but they were good. (They were all good back then, or at least I thought they were.) Weʼre passing the auxiliary cord, sharing . . . . Continue Reading »
David Bowie's Search for God
by William Doino Jr.One doesn’t often find people of faith, especially conservatives, rallying around an entertainer who became famous for dressing up as an androgynous rock-star named Ziggy Stardust, singing, “Rebel, Rebel,” and pushing musical expression to its outer limits. And yet, when David Bowie died last . . . . Continue Reading »
Worship Wars
by Richard J. MouwI listened in on a conversation recently on “the worship wars” in evangelical-style congregations and I heard some interesting observations. My main dissent, which I did not express, was that the discussants were treating the battles about worship as a relatively recent phenomenon—several . . . . Continue Reading »
I'll Write Til I'm Right With God
by O. Alan Noble“I am a sinner, who’s probably gonna sin again”Kendrick Lamar’s breakthrough album, good kid m.A.A.d. city, is a conversion narrative, tracing the moral journey of a young Kendrick through vice, violence, and grace. I don’t mean that the album is just redemptive or that one can interpret . . . . Continue Reading »
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