Crystal Downing

The Ghost in The Fall

Unlike Jacques Derrida, who was haunted by specters of Karl Marx, I am haunted by specters of JKA Smith. My first glimpse of Smith’s ghostly presence came in 2005, when an anonymous reader for my soon-to-be published book on postmodernism berated me for never mentioning The Fall of Interpretation. As I checked Smith’s text out […]

Joshua Busman

Exercising Your Second Commandment Rights: Luther and Calvin on Music

Many of the most important debates of the recent “worship wars” in evangelicalism (including the form/content divide identified in yesterday’s post) have their origins in two important conflicts from the first few decades of the Reformation: first, the debate over the exegesis of the Ten Commandments or “Decalogue,” and second, a broader conversation about the […]

Caleb Hendrickson

The Food Abides

Among the slogans of the recent food movement is the admonition, “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food.” This slogan makes a surprising assumption: that the eaters being addressed don’t know what their food is. You can imagine this shift in consciousness and may have undergone it yourself—while considering your Hostess cupcake or energy drink, you […]