Anybody who has a message that they care about communicating should pay attention to the great lesson taught by Calvin and Hobbes: The lesson is that not every message can be communicated in every medium. Yes, I mean Bill Watterson’s comic strip about the tiger
Featured Essay / Avant-Garde
Conversation on Theology & California
Here's a one-hour video about theology and California, or, more specifically, Theology and California, the book of essays that Jason Sexton and I edited (Ashgate, 2014). You can view it at Open Biola (which includes several video and audio options), or stream the embedded version here below. Jason and I were…
Art Essays
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Hours of the Compassion of God
A set of images from the Book of Hours of Catherine of Cleves, a Dutch Gothic illuminated manuscript from about 1440 (see below for more information on the source). In a series of nine pages, the artist gives us the legend of the cross, which
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Biola’s Jesus Mural: How “The Word” Dwells Among Us
One of the first things you’ll notice if you visit Biola University’s campus is our Jesus Mural, “The Word.” It’s iconic for us, our evangelical counterpart to Notre Dame’s “Touchdown Jesus.” It’s huge–27 feet tall–and all the more significant as it stands in the middle
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Christmas Playlist 2013: Instrumental Good Cheer
Instrumental Christmas: The Sanders household just wasn’t in the mood for the all-out onslaught of the familiar Christmas music in the early days of this December, so we put together a set of wordless wonders, and we sought out as many unfamiliar tunes as possible.
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God Went Bowling
There’s a little song called God Went Bowling by a band called the Swirling Eddies. It was on their 1994 album Zoom Daddy, and it features an oompah beat driven by accordion. Over it all is the snide vocal of Terry Scott Taylor, the songwriter
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Dig Here Said the Angel
“I sell records worldwide now that I’ve died,” boasts the singer in one of the tracks on the new Daniel Amos album, Dig Here Said the Angel. The character is a musician, obviously, but postmortem, and somehow (As a ghost? In a dream?) he’s assuring
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We’re Not Lost by The Show Ponies
Album Review by Janelle and Phillip Aijian “We’re not lost, we just don’t know where to go.” The lyric from the Show Ponies’ sophomore effort invokes not only the album title, but also one of its major themes: humor and humility in the midst of
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Spiders, Comics, and Jonathan Edwards
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is widely recognized as the greatest theologian America has yet produced. He wrote epochal books and preached sermons that still echo in our cultural memory from the Great Awakening. One of the least important things he ever wrote is a fun bit
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St. Patrick Comics & Stories!
The cartoon adventures of St. Patrick, from a 1947 comic book called Treasure Chest of Fun & Fact. This four-page adventure by George F. Foley tells the saint’s story in a way designed to hold the interest of a young Roman Catholic audience in the
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Pictographic Catechism from the Andes
It’s not exactly a comic book, but there is an old catechism that certainly makes an interesting use of sequential images for the purposes of teaching Christian doctrine. The Huntington Free Library in the Bronx published a facsimile edition of a “pictographic Quechua catechism” that is
Essay / Avant-Garde
Cats Superbowl Party
Downstairs: A well-dressed reveler arrives, as previous guests doff exo-togs at a handy hat rack. Climbing a ladder to the second floor, partiers pile up on at least two chairs to watch the big game. I count at least a dozen there. Snacks are on
Essay / Art
Doing Theology with Monteverdi
Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) was an Italian composer whose music, both secular and sacred, was influential in the transition from Renaissance forms of music to the Baroque period. He is well known for his use and development of two different styles of composition: Renaissance polyphony and