I finished reading T.R. Reid’s book “The United States of Europe—The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy”. The book was interesting to read and would be helpful for anyone wishing to know a little more about the European Union (the “EU”), and I definitely recommend it. I once saw Reid on television being interviewed about the book. At the the time, he seemed to me very much a cheerleader for the EU. The book was pretty much the same way: full of lots of hip-hip-hurray for the EU.
Now, when one reads about something and you start to get the feeling like “this is sounding a little too good to be true”, it’s usually an indication that it’s not true, or at least not entirely and that it’s only part of the whole picture. Reid doesn’t talk very much, not in any length, about some of the downsides and problems of Europe. For example, although he is sometimes almost effusive in his adoration of the European welfare state, he neglects to deal with the very real issue of how the welfare state can be sustainable over the long haul given the demographic trends in Europe. Nor does he bother discussing in any real depth the acute problems involving the increasing population of muslim immigrants, and how they are to be assimilated into a liberal democracy. In my opinion, Reid tended to make everything sound like “sweetness and light” in Europe, as opposed to big, bad, backwards, ugly America. It started to sound too much like stacking the deck in favor of one side, and so I recommend maintaining a bit of skepticism while reading Reid’s book.
As to proving the “end of American supremacy”, other than just repeating some threadbare European arguments, Reid doesn’t cinch his case at all. Yes, it’s true that the EU has a good deal of economic clout in the world—which Americans do well to be keenly aware of—but the Europeans were also incapable of stopping a bloody genocide occuring in their own backyard, in Bosnia and Kosovo; and they were also much too easily oil-bribed by a murderous and dangerous tyrant; and there has also been this ugly resurgence of anti-semitism in Europe, which Reid hardly mentions if at all. In a world still full of very brutal and savage people, terrorists and tyrants and thugs, and Loony Mullahs eager to acquire nuclear weapons, it still remains the case that, when push comes to shove, one had better have a sizable military, along with the determination to use it if need be. The United States still has this, and Europeans shouldn’t be so self-righteously quick to criticize us for using it. On the other hand, I do not despise Europe, and Europeans would be gravely mistaken to suppose that somehow Americans would cheer the destruction of European civilization. Most of us came from Europe; some of my own ancestors came from Germany, my wife’s from Norway. Europe has many things to admire and some things to criticize. And I’ll leave it to the Europeans, such as Vaclav Havel, to do the trenchant criticizing, especially of the perennial European propensity for appeasement. To his credit, Reid did point out, in so many words, that thanks very much to the United States, Europe is no longer under the heel of thuggish dictatorships; and thanks to the United States having taken care of its defense for so long, Europe also has had the luxury of spending much of its resources on building its prosperous economic union and its peaceable welfare state. And I don’t begrudge them having what they have. It just might be that a tiny bit of gratitude is in order here—along with the tiny bit of real estate we have over there to bury our country’s war dead.
Reid also mentioned briefly the very pervasive secularism of Europe, and he says “the striking fact remains that ‘Christian Europe’ is hardly Christian anymore”. According to Reid, this is one of the reasons Europe is a much different place than the United States in certain respects. And it is also one of the reasons why Europeans find some American attitudes aggravating and difficult to understand. As weak the influence Xnty has on the culture in the United States nowdays—and I consider it pretty weak, inspite of what The Left™ imagines in its perfervid hallucinations about an all-powerful “Neocon-Zionist-Evangelical-Etc conspiracy controlling the White House, the Pentagon, and the government”—in Europe’s case, Xnty’s influence is much, much weaker, and it is really, for all practical purposes, non-existent. (As much as he is a celebrity, not even the Pope, for all his wheeling and dealing, could get a mention in the EU constitution regarding Europe’s xtian heritage.) This makes me wonder, sometimes, about how long, after turning their backs on God, can a whole society of people go before He decides to “push back” in some way.
Addendum: The mighty Mark Steyn has an interesting side-light on the matter. In contrast to the “buy stock in the EU” attitude of Reid, Steyn thinks Europe is on its way to imploding.
Addendum: Speaking of “pushing back”, here’s a tiny bit of good news coming from France—which is an article in “Christianity Today” online that merits a hat tip to the indefatigable Pastorius at CUANAS blog for pointing it out. I agree with Pastorius that one shouldn’t make too much of this, but good news is always refreshing to hear, no matter how small it might be, when it’s coming from an ungodly place like France.
Addendum: The inimitable Victor Davis Hanson, in his article entitled “Soft Power, Hard Reality”, has another interesting sidelight on Europe.
Sunday, February 13, 2005
Art, Mega Churches, and Small Groups
Someone who goes by the name “DLE” commented on Joe Carter’s posting which I mentioned yesterday. And he at least tried to grapple with the larger picture of why evangelicaldom, generally speaking, is so artistically impoverished. I hope “DLE”, whoever he¹ is, will forgive me for reposting what he wrote, but I thought it was significant enough to be taken note of. Here’s what “DLE” had to say:
Addendum: Someone who goes by the name “J.J.” gave what I thought was a thoughtful answer to #4 in the list I mentioned the other day. Here’s what “J.J.” had to say:
As to which came first, in temporal order, the small group or the mega-church, well, I wasn’t trying to postulate a particular theory of development. But I do think that, by and large, churches in the past tended to be generally smallish—I’m not entirely sure what cutoff number to put on this, maybe under 500—and what passes today for a medium sized church would have been considered, in years past, a fairly large congregation. And my recollections are that churches did manage to do much of what “J.J.” described without such an intentional and organized effort to create “small groups”, along with the intensive and concerted push to make sure everyone has signed up to join one. It’s this institutionalization, for lack of a better term, of “small groups” that I have been noticing, which looks like a fairly recent development to me. One mega-church I was at recently seemed to have a supervisory staff dedicated just to running “small groups”. More than anything else, it just struck me as somewhat incongruous, almost funny in a humorous way: here is this enormous mega-churches, which meets on Sunday mornings in an equally enormous building that houses a basketball court, complete with bleachers and so forth, yet the push for everyone to sign up be in a “small group” of some kind that meet in someone’s home.
Furthermore, as for my “beef with small groups”, well, let me hasten to point out that there really are no beeves, neither with “small groups” nor with mega-churches. In fact, for the past 20 plus years, I have been going, more or less, to a mega-church of some kind. And at various times, going all the way back to those hoary ages of long ago, the 1970s, I and Ms. Moonbones have been involved, here and there, off and on, with what conceivably could be called “small groups”—although I don’t think we ever quite thought of them that way. In them there were some good experiences, and some horribly bad ones. I am not trying to complain about the development; it’s just that lately there have been a few times when I start to wonder what’s going on, and why things have changed so much, and why they are happening the way they are.
I can’t speak to what’s going on everywhere else, because I can’t be everywhere else; but I can hazard a few observations based on some things that I have seen happen. So I think there are a few possible pitfalls in how mega-churches manage and run “small groups”. Let me list a few here:
¹ [Update] I think I now know who "DLE" is.
I think that whatever hope we have of creating a new Evangelical paradigm for the arts is largely a pipe dream until many things change in the art world and society as a whole. Several reasons:Yes, as I have said, it’s deliciously easy and so much fun stomping on evangelical xtians about something or another. People do it so often anymore that it’s sunk to the level of incessant background noise, something hardly worth paying any attention to. Yes, some evangelicals are tacky and have no aesthetic sense, and some of them even like those overpriced potboilers produced by Thomas Kinkade. But the same is true of everybody else no matter where you go. So it comes down to the same old yadda, yadda, yadda.
1. Christian arts flourished when there was patronage. Patronage is unheard of in the United States now. Art has been made a commodity like so many other things. Plus, the art market is so wildly in flux that one day your collection is worth millions and the next day thousands. Patrons of the arts won’t stomach that kind of crazed fluctuation. Therefore, there are no longer any true patrons of artists left in this country.
2. The spiral to the bottom in what is being “said” through art is almost complete. Christian artists are stuck in that they either wilt financially trying for something more soul-stirring or they go with the flow and make Christianized versions of the dreck that passes for art today. Thomas Kinkade may be reviled here, but at least he’s not trying to pass off his own feces as a “statement”. I think the British Musuem recently paid $300,000 for “art” that was nothing more than a pile of the artist’s feces. If that is what the people want, perhaps there is no hope in raising the bar.
3. Market realities still bear. With the consolidation going on in the publishing realms, publishers are less willing to give new authors a try. They are also loathe to takes risks with anything that isn’t a surefire bestseller. Again, Christian writers can sell their books, or they can try for the altruistic and go broke. Now, which of us Christian authors is going to try to buck that system? Or would we rather eat?
4. Today’s Christians don’t operate out of a solely Christian worldview, so they cannot see the importance of art. But who can blame them? Given the current social/time/church/job pressures on most families, the art world has to take a backseat. If I’m spending all my time trying to keep my education current just so I can keep my job, what time do I have to devote to art and the art world? Not much.…
Addendum: Someone who goes by the name “J.J.” gave what I thought was a thoughtful answer to #4 in the list I mentioned the other day. Here’s what “J.J.” had to say:
My short answer to Lunar Skeleton would be “for the same reason a very small church would”.First of all, I wish to thank “J.J.” for his thoughtful answer, and I hope he doesn’t mind me reposting it here. Also, it occurs to me that I was probably not entirely clear in what I said, so let me further confuse the situation by clarifying it.
He implies megachurches are built and then small group ministry is started. I don’t know if he intended this, but any megachurch I’ve ever heard of was built upon small group ministry, not vice-versa. That may be beside the point. Lunar Skeleton has some near-prophetic things to say about the church and art, but I don’t understand his beef with small groups…you’d think they would be even more necessary in large churches. Although, I’m an elder at a small church (usual attendance is 50-70), and I’d actually say small groups are just about as necessary for us as for any church. Small groups are not just bible studies, although that’s an important function of them. They also serve as a place for people to fellowship and minister to one another. In our church, even with about 50 active members, there is always someone who is sick, has a sick family member, has had a death in the family that week, just had a baby, just lost a job, has financial trouble, or just about any crisis you could name. When this happens, our church has always tried to rally around the person or family in crisis…to bring them a meal, calls or cards of encouragement, prayer, money if a cancer patient’s health insurance is about to lapse, house-sitting, household chores for the handicapped or injured, etc.…whatever the situation may call for. Like I said, there is always a crisis to attend to. If you get in a situation where the entire church gets involved with every single crisis, you eventually run into “compassion burnout” as we called it. Even with only 50-70 people, being involved with every single crisis of every family will easily wear people out. But with small groups, you cut the problem down to size. The people in the small groups will minister to one another, perhaps not even always aware of all that is going on with everyone else in the church, but then again, it’s much less likely someone will get “missed” because they just happened to have their crisis in a high peak week of crises. People in small groups become much more aware of what’s going on in each others’ lives. A crisis that may have looked lower priority on the church’s entire list of current personal crises will probably be more well attended to by those close to the person in a small group rather than as part of an unofficial laundry list of everything going on in the church.
As to which came first, in temporal order, the small group or the mega-church, well, I wasn’t trying to postulate a particular theory of development. But I do think that, by and large, churches in the past tended to be generally smallish—I’m not entirely sure what cutoff number to put on this, maybe under 500—and what passes today for a medium sized church would have been considered, in years past, a fairly large congregation. And my recollections are that churches did manage to do much of what “J.J.” described without such an intentional and organized effort to create “small groups”, along with the intensive and concerted push to make sure everyone has signed up to join one. It’s this institutionalization, for lack of a better term, of “small groups” that I have been noticing, which looks like a fairly recent development to me. One mega-church I was at recently seemed to have a supervisory staff dedicated just to running “small groups”. More than anything else, it just struck me as somewhat incongruous, almost funny in a humorous way: here is this enormous mega-churches, which meets on Sunday mornings in an equally enormous building that houses a basketball court, complete with bleachers and so forth, yet the push for everyone to sign up be in a “small group” of some kind that meet in someone’s home.
Furthermore, as for my “beef with small groups”, well, let me hasten to point out that there really are no beeves, neither with “small groups” nor with mega-churches. In fact, for the past 20 plus years, I have been going, more or less, to a mega-church of some kind. And at various times, going all the way back to those hoary ages of long ago, the 1970s, I and Ms. Moonbones have been involved, here and there, off and on, with what conceivably could be called “small groups”—although I don’t think we ever quite thought of them that way. In them there were some good experiences, and some horribly bad ones. I am not trying to complain about the development; it’s just that lately there have been a few times when I start to wonder what’s going on, and why things have changed so much, and why they are happening the way they are.
I can’t speak to what’s going on everywhere else, because I can’t be everywhere else; but I can hazard a few observations based on some things that I have seen happen. So I think there are a few possible pitfalls in how mega-churches manage and run “small groups”. Let me list a few here:
- “Small groups” can become a substitute for pastoral involvement with his congregation. And it can lessen the congregation’s interaction with the pastor.
- The group leaders may tend to be inexperienced and lacking in leadership and teaching abilities. On the other hand, the “bad experiences” I mentioned earlier involved those cases where the group leadership was excessively authoritarian.
- They tend to lack direction, and their focus tends to be more on making sure everybody is getting along. For example, there was one case where a few of the people, who were involved in the particular group, were cohabiting without the benefit of marriage; they were new converts and probably didn’t know better. Yet, for fear of rocking the boat, nobody ever bothered to explain to them that such was really not an acceptable situation.
¹ [Update] I think I now know who "DLE" is.
Saturday, February 12, 2005
Truckloads from the Land of Kinkadia
In his posting entitled "Gallery (Re)Opening¹," the inexpugnable Joe Carter, over at the Evangelical Outpost blog, asks some interesting questions about the state of evangelical xtian aesthetics: "When did art stop being important to evangelical Christians? How did we go from Rembrandt to Kinkade? When did our appreciation of a work of art become based on how it matched the colors in our living room carpet?" From there, it appears that Joe plans on posting various examples of xtian art from the past, and will be asking his bloggerati fans to comment on them.
This will be interesting. And as an aside, I should point out that I have pretty strong opinions about art, and that my educational background included plenty of work in the pictorial arts, including art history. I did pretty well in my art history classes, and so I can claim that I’m not entirely ignorant about the subject.
I don’t know if Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost thinks that the evangelical community has a problem with aesthetic barbarism which is intrinsic and peculiar to itself. If he does, then I must disagree with such a viewpoint. Really, when you look at the overall picture, aesthetic barbarism is quite endemic to the larger society here in America. The real questions are why are evangelical xtians not all that different in their artistic tastes from other Americans, and ought evangelicals to be different in this particular regard? Just how important is it? (Funny, but I don’t recall any Beatitude that started out saying "Blessed are the asethetically sophisticated…") But, still, if in their artistic preferences evangelical xtians ought to be different, and supposedly better judges of beaux arts, than their neighbors—and if they were once better judges in the past but no longer are—then who should repristinate the lost aesthetic acumen? Who will do the educating? Their pastors? Bloggers? The New York Times Magazine? The Village Voice? I bring this up, because it’s remarkably easy, and so much jolly fun, for people to dump on evangelical xtians about some matter or another, even evangelicals like to dump on themselves. But nobody genuinely tackles the underlying issues with any depth. But no matter, still, Joe Carter is doing a great service by showing examples of art from the treasury of the past. We can at least learn the Xnty was the root and source of much great art; I commend him for that.
Now, as for Thomas Kinkade—who was both marvelously successful and yet always was cited as the leading example proving that evangelical xtians are clueless about the fine arts—my only real dispute with Kinkade was simply this: He knocked out reproductions of his oeuvre by the gazillions, and shipped them off, in big eighteen-wheeler truckloads, to his distribution franchises, all of which is okay, I suppose, since many people need unoffensive and colorful wall decorations, but, man oh man, the ridiculously over-inflated prices that are charged for each reproduction. Just look at the little numbers in the corner of the picture. It might be something like "512/6500", which means that this is reproduction #512 out of a run of 6,500 reproductions manufactured from the original. Now, I have seen prices for some of these knock-offs ranging up to several thousand dollars. So just do the math: 6,500 reproductions of just one Kinkade, each being sold for more than a grand a piece, and what do you have? Then multiply that by the number of separate variations being peddled of the same old cottages with all the lights turned on. Well, Kinkade must have been a multi-millionaire, perhaps the richest Painter of Schlock™ who has ever lived. If xtians were to be criticize for buying Kinkadian cottages, it should be for allowing themselves to be royally bamboozled because of the exessive prices they were paying, especially for such large reproduction runs. One thing is for sure: Kinkade cottages have no investment value. In fact, if anything, the Kinkadeabilia market reached a saturation point years ago and has pretty much collapsed. The cottages are now everywhere, and who needs another one? Nevertheless, let me add that not everything Thomas Kinkade did was merely "Cottages-burning-up-vast-amounts-of-electrical-wattage". There were a few landscapes and streetscapes of his that I've seen, at least as Giclée on canvas reproductions, which I thought were fairly competent, even beautiful. Underneath all that commercial business savy, there just have might have been a genuine artist there.²
Be that as it may, I think that if Joe Carter really wanted to dig up some weightier issues, rather than merely picking on fellow evangelicals for their taste in interior decor, I could think of a few things I’d like to see investigated. Here’s my list of suggestions:
¹This article has been 404'd, but you can refer to his article Kinkade’s Cottage Fantasy: The Dispiriting Art of Thomas Kinkade, where Joe illustrated his points and defended himself by comparing two Kinkade paintings. In Mr. Carter’s words, one painting “is worthy of gracing a museum wall, the second is only worthy of garnishing a cheap greeting card”. Guess which one is the Kinkade. The answer might surprise you.
²In fact, some of Kinkade's business practices were questionable, and he was sued because of it.
[Update] I have cleaned up things a bit and made a few changes to reflect the fact that Thomas Kinkade died on April 12, 2012.
This will be interesting. And as an aside, I should point out that I have pretty strong opinions about art, and that my educational background included plenty of work in the pictorial arts, including art history. I did pretty well in my art history classes, and so I can claim that I’m not entirely ignorant about the subject.
I don’t know if Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost thinks that the evangelical community has a problem with aesthetic barbarism which is intrinsic and peculiar to itself. If he does, then I must disagree with such a viewpoint. Really, when you look at the overall picture, aesthetic barbarism is quite endemic to the larger society here in America. The real questions are why are evangelical xtians not all that different in their artistic tastes from other Americans, and ought evangelicals to be different in this particular regard? Just how important is it? (Funny, but I don’t recall any Beatitude that started out saying "Blessed are the asethetically sophisticated…") But, still, if in their artistic preferences evangelical xtians ought to be different, and supposedly better judges of beaux arts, than their neighbors—and if they were once better judges in the past but no longer are—then who should repristinate the lost aesthetic acumen? Who will do the educating? Their pastors? Bloggers? The New York Times Magazine? The Village Voice? I bring this up, because it’s remarkably easy, and so much jolly fun, for people to dump on evangelical xtians about some matter or another, even evangelicals like to dump on themselves. But nobody genuinely tackles the underlying issues with any depth. But no matter, still, Joe Carter is doing a great service by showing examples of art from the treasury of the past. We can at least learn the Xnty was the root and source of much great art; I commend him for that.
Now, as for Thomas Kinkade—who was both marvelously successful and yet always was cited as the leading example proving that evangelical xtians are clueless about the fine arts—my only real dispute with Kinkade was simply this: He knocked out reproductions of his oeuvre by the gazillions, and shipped them off, in big eighteen-wheeler truckloads, to his distribution franchises, all of which is okay, I suppose, since many people need unoffensive and colorful wall decorations, but, man oh man, the ridiculously over-inflated prices that are charged for each reproduction. Just look at the little numbers in the corner of the picture. It might be something like "512/6500", which means that this is reproduction #512 out of a run of 6,500 reproductions manufactured from the original. Now, I have seen prices for some of these knock-offs ranging up to several thousand dollars. So just do the math: 6,500 reproductions of just one Kinkade, each being sold for more than a grand a piece, and what do you have? Then multiply that by the number of separate variations being peddled of the same old cottages with all the lights turned on. Well, Kinkade must have been a multi-millionaire, perhaps the richest Painter of Schlock™ who has ever lived. If xtians were to be criticize for buying Kinkadian cottages, it should be for allowing themselves to be royally bamboozled because of the exessive prices they were paying, especially for such large reproduction runs. One thing is for sure: Kinkade cottages have no investment value. In fact, if anything, the Kinkadeabilia market reached a saturation point years ago and has pretty much collapsed. The cottages are now everywhere, and who needs another one? Nevertheless, let me add that not everything Thomas Kinkade did was merely "Cottages-burning-up-vast-amounts-of-electrical-wattage". There were a few landscapes and streetscapes of his that I've seen, at least as Giclée on canvas reproductions, which I thought were fairly competent, even beautiful. Underneath all that commercial business savy, there just have might have been a genuine artist there.²
Be that as it may, I think that if Joe Carter really wanted to dig up some weightier issues, rather than merely picking on fellow evangelicals for their taste in interior decor, I could think of a few things I’d like to see investigated. Here’s my list of suggestions:
- The widespread, complete breakdown and disintegration of xtian hymnody, and why so much of it seems to be dictated by the sort of music heard on "commercial xtian radio". This is especially a big peeve of mine, and I think it’s a far more important issue because the consequences are becoming increasingly disasterous in the community worship of the church. The hymnals long have been thrown out, a collective amnesia has been imposed concerning the hymnody created by the xtians of the past, and now so much of the music tends to be overly-repetitive and narcissistic.
- Why do we need this glut of Bible translations? In their search for ever increasing profits, and to please the analysts on Wall Street, are book publishers, by constantly inventing new translations and paraphrases, basically profiteering off of the Holy Bible? Just because I ask this question, please don’t jump to the conclusion that I’m just another one of those paranoid KJV-only nutcases. No, I am not. But with the pastor regularly using over a half-dozen different versions during the sermon, I’m starting to wonder if maybe things are starting to get out of hand and if perhaps all this versioning is becoming a quick and easy substitute for doing the difficult work of exegesis. I especially noticed this trend when the pastor started using the Rick Warren "40 Days of Whatever" stuff, which brings me to my next point…
- How widespread is the "Rick Warrenization" in evangelical pulpits? By this I mean where pastors no longer do the hard work of individual sermon preparation, but instead simply buy their sermon notes off of Pastors.com.
- It’s funny, but why is it that pastors who want to build mega-churches, after having accomplished that goal, end pushing their congregations into being members of "small groups"?
- Why is it that the people who painted those funny riverscape Trompe-l'œil behind the baptistries always used too much phthalocyanine green?
¹This article has been 404'd, but you can refer to his article Kinkade’s Cottage Fantasy: The Dispiriting Art of Thomas Kinkade, where Joe illustrated his points and defended himself by comparing two Kinkade paintings. In Mr. Carter’s words, one painting “is worthy of gracing a museum wall, the second is only worthy of garnishing a cheap greeting card”. Guess which one is the Kinkade. The answer might surprise you.
²In fact, some of Kinkade's business practices were questionable, and he was sued because of it.
[Update] I have cleaned up things a bit and made a few changes to reflect the fact that Thomas Kinkade died on April 12, 2012.
Labels:
art,
dysfunction
Saturday, February 05, 2005
Recently I finished reading a book by Peter Levenda, entitled “Unholy Alliance—A History of Nazi Involvement with the Occult” (2nd edition, Continuum International Publishing, 2002). The author’s writing style is gravely deficient in many places, but he does present enough evidence to have a tenable case, so that one thing is for certain: in many ways and at all levels, especially the highest, the Nazis were heavily influenced by occultism. Unfortunately, after reading through most of the book, I can’t recommend it as a serious work on a historical subject, because Levenda indulges much too often in sensationalism, in introducing irrelvant side issues, and in engaging in just plain old shoddy, disorganized writing. This was one of those books that cry out for stringent editing, and might have benefited from it, but which unfortunately never received any, apparently, from the publishers at Continuum. Nevertheless, the book did have an extensive bibliography, which might actually be useful to a serious researcher.
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