Issue 18: Celebrity

Amy Laura Hall, Kara N. Slade

This Is the Way the World Ends: A Conversation between Kara N. Slade and Amy Laura Hall on Domination and Solidarity in Young Adult Dystopias

Dystopian novels—stories of the future going badly wrong—have apparently now surpassed the vampire and fantasy genres in the young adult fiction market. The books, and the phenomenon of their popularity, have provoked numerous discussions online, in schools, and in the sort of serious, adult magazines that teenagers don’t read. (We know this, of course, only […]

Daniel Bowman Jr., John Leax

Faithful to the Work: An Interview and Two Poems with John Leax, Part II

Read part one of our interview, plus two more of John Leax’s poems (and audio) here. An elder statesman in art and faith circles, John Leax (Jack to friends) is a poet and essayist of hard-earned, humble wisdom, and as such, he avoids the spotlight. The author of books like Country Labors: Poems for All […]

Daniel Bowman Jr., John Leax

Faithful to the Work: An Interview and Two Poems with John Leax, Part I

An elder statesman in art and faith circles, John Leax (Jack to friends) is a poet and essayist of hard-earned, humble wisdom, and as such, he avoids the spotlight. The author of books like Country Labors: Poems for All Seasons and Out Walking: Reflections on our Place in the Natural World, he would rather be […]

Kevin Gosa

Gaga à Gogo

I remember the first time I saw Lady Gaga perform on TV. She was seated at a very large and very pink piano brimming with plastic bubbles. She had barely tickled the flamingo ivory before strutting center stage to engage in a most bizarre choreography. At the time, Lady Gaga was still becoming the icon […]

Anya Liftig

Anxieties of Influence: Performance Art, Celebrity, and the Self

I have one goal as an artist: not to sit on my ass. For me, art is action in all of its variety of forms. Performance artists, then, should be pushing the boundaries of action, daring to engage with the environment, culture, and most importantly, other people as intensely as possible. I want to do the […]

Carole Baker

Celebrity and Iconicity: Some Preliminary Sketches

That contemporary America is captivated by the phenomenon of celebrity is hardly a contestable observation. Even those of us who try to limit the impact of celebrity on our life find that its tenacity is hard to overcome. Some try to overcome the impact of celebrity by willing its insignificance. But that some energy is […]

David Dark

Bell Rings True: A Review of Rob Bell’s Love Wins

One interpretation has collapsed; but because it was considered the interpretation it now seems as if there were no meaning at all in existence, as if everything were in vain. – Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power[i] I grew up in a family obsessed—blessedly so, I believe—with what we might call the “biblical specifics.” Baptized […]

David E. Fitch, Tim Soerens

Master Signifiers and the Survival of Evangelicalism: An Interview with David Fitch

In his latest book, “The End of Evangelicalism?”, pastor and professor David E. Fitch explores the possibility of evangelicalism surviving, in some form, throughout the 21st century.  Fitch utilizes the philosophy of Slavoj Žižek to deconstruct what many evangelicals hold most dear–inerrancy of Scripture, the decision for Christ, and belief that the U.S. is a […]

Andrew Forrest

A Voice in the Oregon Wilderness: Doug Frank’s Revelation of a Gentler God

Doug Frank. A Gentler God: Breaking Free of the Almighty in the Company of the Human Jesus. Eugene, OR. Wipf & Stock, 2010. $22.40.     I must confess, at the outset, that I know Dr. Doug Frank. I was a student in the Oregon Extension program he cofounded in southern Oregon and I have […]

Conor Cunningham, Eric Austin Lee

Ultra-Darwinism and Creation’s Sabbath: An Interview with Conor Cunningham, Part II

In his recently published Darwin’s Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get it Wrong, Conor Cunningham, the Co-Director of the Centre of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham, surveys the vast expanse of evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, philosophy of mind, naturalism, and intelligent design and skillfully argues against the reductive logics […]

Brian D. McLaren

Faith Beyond All Answers: A Response to John Piper’s Theodicy

John Piper didn’t waste any time. Six days after the devastating earthquake in Japan, he published a post on his Desiring God blog entitled “Japan: After Empathy and Aid, People Want Answers.”  Here the revered Reformed Baptist theologian and pastor plunges (as he has done on many occasions before) boldly into the field of theodicy. […]

Conor Cunningham, Eric Austin Lee

Ultra-Darwinism and Creation’s Sabbath: An Interview with Conor Cunningham, Part I

In his recently published Darwin’s Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get it Wrong, Conor Cunningham, the Co-Director of the Centre of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham, surveys the vast expanse of evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, philosophy of mind, naturalism, and intelligent design and skillfully argues against the reductive logics […]

Chris Keller, Miroslav Volf

A Voice across the Great Chasm: An Interview with Miroslav Volf

Miroslav Volf, the Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School, is a world-renown theologian who combines impeccable scholarship with a deep passion for the church.  Shaped by his experience of growing up in a Christian community in communist Yugoslavia, Volf has provided an important, distinct theological voice to many of the […]

David Gushee, Matt Elia

Toward a New Moral Hagiography: An Interview with David Gushee

David Gushee has spent more than twenty years as a writer, professor, and activist in the evangelical community. Often a minority voice—both within that world and in the broader Christian conversation—he advances a wide-ranging moral vision that insists on God’s care for society’s most vulnerable elements. His advocacy on behalf of the environment, the unborn, […]

Jason Byassee

Joining the Communion of Saints and Writing the Unwritable Word

When strangers at a party or on an airplane find out you’re in divinity school, they’ll want to tell you everything they think about God. You’re supposed to listen and nod profoundly, and you’d better not correct anything they say. You’ve signed up to be a pastoral counselor, whether you meant to or not. Perhaps […]

Matt Jenson

Reviving the Stairway to Heaven: A Review of Calvin’s Ladder

There are plenty of reasons why it’s a bad idea to write a book about ascending spiritual heights. The first is because that book has been written—by Plato (Symposium), Plotinus (Enneads), Pseudo-Dionysius (Mystical Theology), Dante (Divine Comedy), Bonaventure (The Mind’s Journey into God), Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae). There are many more, and they are weirder.

Heather Smith Stringer, Tara Ward, Zadok Wartes

Curators of Beauty and Space

It is a rare and special treat to find a band that makes music, especially music that one might classify as religious music, which is wholly devoted to the pursuit of beauty. The Opiate Mass, a Seattle-based collaboration of musicians, songwriters, visual artists, audio engineers, and authors, provides just such a treat. In this interview, […]

Catherine Bowler

Wanted: Celebrity and the American Prosperity Preacher

Joel Osteen has every reason to smile. The man known as the “smiling preacher” earns top billing as the leader of Lakewood Church, the nation’s largest church and 43,500 members strong. His books debut as New York Times bestsellers. He looks at home seated across from Larry King, Barbara Walters, and the feisty cast of The View. […]

Brad Elliott Stone

Glenn Beck and the Order of Discourse

This essay is neither for nor against Glenn Beck. The philosopher Michel Foucault warns us to be suspicious of proper names because they tempt us to ascribe agency to the person instead of to the overall flow of discourse, knowledge, and power out of which the person emerges as an agent. I seek to provide […]

Michael W. Austin

Football, Fame, and Fortune

The value of football is found not in fame and fortune, but rather in the potential it provides for cultivating moral and athletic excellence.

Kj Swanson

The Bruises of Bella Swan: Confronting the Evangelical Embrace of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, Part III

See Part I of this essay series, in which Swanson begins her analysis of evanglical responses to the Twilight series by examining Twilight’s false message of abstinence, and Part II, in which she critiques New Moon’s portrayal of men as “protectors” and women as “perpetual, self-sacrificing victims.” Here in Part III, Swanson examines the dangerous sexual dynamic between Edward […]

Daniel Bowman Jr.

To a Famous Poet with a Bad Poem in a Famous Magazine

That field behind the barn across the road, how it once perfected your desires in summer sun . . . To sit in that grass right now, would you offer up a poem? Let the eyes of orioles fund you— let the wind publish you on leaves? All right, draw one more sip of your […]

Schuy R. Weishaar

The Dyslexic Jew

I A dilapidated yellow ice cream truck parked outside the fenced microwave tower, about a mile outside the tiny township of Cisco, Illinois. Aside from the few silver grain silos and the blinking elevator at the Co-op in town, the buzzing tower was the only vertical sign of human progress in the expanse of corn, […]

Katie Kresser

The Real Jeff Koons: Consumer Culture and the Grammar of Desire

In 1980 the young artist Jeff Koons presented his first major solo exhibition, a window installation at New York’s New Museum of Contemporary Art, titled, appropriately, The New. Alongside hermetically sealed vitrines showcasing “ready-made”1 household appliances like a New Hoover Deluxe Rug Shampooer and a New Shelton Wet/Dry 10 Gallon, there were images: meticulously reproduced […]

John Totten

Nicolas Cage and the Problem of Evil: Why Do Good Movies Happen to Bad Actors?

Today, as I write this, the world is learning about the death of Ronnie James Dio, who succumbed to stomach cancer at the age of sixty-seven. The heavy-metal singer replaced Ozzy Osbourne in the late ’70s as the front man for Black Sabbath. After several years and records, Dio went on to front Ritchie Blackmore’s […]

Halden Doerge

The Singularity of Jesus and the Mission of the Church: An Interview with Nathan R. Kerr

In this interview, Nathan R. Kerr reflects on some of the conversations that have emerged in the last two years since the release of his book Christ, History, and Apocalyptic: The Politics of Christian Mission. In particular, he explores the connections between Christology, the nature and task of theology, and the mission of the church in […]

Maxwell Kennel

The Highest Contradiction: The Dyadic Form of St. Paul Among the Philosophers

John D. Caputo and Linda Martín Alcoff. St. Paul Among the Philosophers. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009. 208 pages. $17.90 paperback. St. Paul Among the Philosophers is a landmark of the resurgence of interest in Saint Paul within contemporary continental philosophy. In keeping with the theme of this issue of The Other Journal, the […]

John Totten

A More Subversive, Sincere Celebrity: A Review of Banksy’s Foray into Film

Banksy, Exit Through the Gift Shop. Revolver Entertainment, 2010. Visit here to view a list of screenings in the United States. I was the first person in the history of my high school to fail the AP Art exam. The class, which at the time was somewhat exclusive, consisted of about six students every year. […]

Kj Swanson

Grateful Victimization, Joyful Suffering: Confronting the Evangelical Embrace of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, Part II

See Part I of this essay series, in which Swanson begins her analysis of evanglical responses to the Twilightseries by examining Twilight‘s false message of abstinence. Here in Part II, Swanson critiques New Moon’s portrayal of men as “protectors” and women as “perpetual, self-sacrificing victims.” Twilight has become the synecdochic term for Stephenie Meyer’s book, film, and pop […]

James K. A. Smith

Poser Christianity

Brett McCracken. Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2010. 255 pages. $10.87 paperback (Amazon). Click here or on the image below to purchase Hipster Christianity from Amazon.com and help support The Other Journal. When I was a teenager, I was religiously devoted to freestyle BMX: flatland, street, vert, all of it. It […]

Brian D. McLaren, Tom Ryan

Between Mixed Martial Arts and the "L" Word: An Interview with Brian McLaren

Brian McLaren has been asking important questions about Christian practice for decades, stirring needed debate within the world of evangelicalism and beyond. His newest book, A New Kind of Christianity, continues McLaren’s project of assessing and reassessing our assumptions concerning the foundations of modern Christian practice by asking ten important questions about the pillars of the Christian faith: narrative, […]

Allison Backous, Ron Hansen

Graced Occasions: An Interview with Ron Hansen

Ron Hansen’s fiction is tight and rich. Each of Hansen’s writings carries a certain arc: the plains of the American West, the sanctuary of a hushed convent, and the frenzied deck of theDeutschland are both terse and beautiful, places where redemption is particularly fitted to each character’s peculiar, compelling humanity. In this interview, Hansen talks […]

Luci Shaw

Translation

After resurrection, Jesus acted strange, materializing through solid wood, even though he didn’t look that different. The gashes seeped still, varnishing the tentative hand, the fingers that needed to know him new. Let me say how strange I feel, trusting this to be true—that a body can be both mortally wounded and whole enough to […]

James K. A. Smith

How (Not) to Change the World

James Davison Hunter. To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010. 368 pages. $20.12 hardcover (Amazon). It’s hard to resist the spectacle of the Wachowski brothers’ film Speed Racer. Their visual evocation of a kind of live-action anime hovers and […]

Paul Jaussen

“At Least They’ve Got Stars on Them”: Fantasy, Cinema, and Wes Anderson

Two short films cast a long shadow over the history of cinema. The first is the famous 1895 Lumière Brothers’ “L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat,” a mere fifty seconds of documentary footage. Through a static, single shot, we watch a train approaching from a distance, chugging from the center-right of the frame […]

Artur Rosman

The Kenotic Recalibration of Correlation (Theology): A Review of Freedom of the Self by Jeffrey Keuss

Jeffrey F. Keuss. Freedom of the Self: Kenosis, Cultural Identity, and Mission at the Crossroads. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publishers, 2010. 182 pages. $21.00 paperback (Amazon). Click here or on the image to purchase Freedom of the Self from Amazon.com and help support The Other Journal. Motto: “Please step forward to the rear!” This is an approximate translation of a request […]