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MASHUP: Conversations about Cinema and the Church (Part II)

By Paul Lundberg With regard to work, changes in the American and global economy have undermined stable, lifelong careers and replaced them with careers of lower security, more frequent job changes and an ongoing need for new training and education. It’s no longer a straight upward path: getting your foot in the door, working hard for your first promotion, and then moving into management or trading up for another position in the same field. Young

MASHUP: Conversations about Cinema and the Church (Part I)

By Paul Lundberg Perhaps you’ve seen a trailer for the movie Cowboys and Aliens. And perhaps you’ve wondered, “Has it come to this?” Have we exhausted every possible storyline to the point that we now must combine genres to come up with something new? Apparently it has, and it boasts the star power of Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford-a.k.a. James Bond and Indiana Jones. When I first saw the trailer for this movie, conflict between

Finding God in Popular Culture (Part II)

By Anton C. Vrame, PhD The Borrowed The second level of religion in popular media has two related dimensions. We can see pieces that are not based on a “religious source” or those that use “religious ideas” extensively. Babette’s Feast is a story about a Christian community by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) that was beautifully adapted into a movie. Many of the ideas it presents are deeply theological (and it includes perhaps one of the

Finding God in Popular Culture (Part I)

By Anton C. Vrame, PhD Walk into a museum, read a novel, listen to a popular song, or go to the cineplex, and most likely you can find God or “the religious” in these elements of our culture. Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes not. If we treat these elements like texts to be studied and apply some of our skills as interpreters, we can treat these contemporary-popular sources in meaningful ways and “open them up” for