What saddens me about this is that As far as Christian academics in the academy go, she might be the best we've got. And the best she caN do during a time of war is to snark conservatives about masculinity.
Christianity will lose in the academy, and it deserves to lose....
We will lose because we lack talent, we have no originality, and we can't say anything meaningful or relevant.
Whag our academic think is meaningful, beautiful, deep and important, makes no impact outside a small slice of upper middle class evangelical faux Aesthetes...
We have no vision to offer the world. Most of our writers have been reduced to writing Christian knock offs of secular books.
Like when Rachel Held Evans wrote 'A year of Biblical Womanhood' (in 2012), which is a knock off of 'The Year of Living Biblically' (written 2007)
Our authors produce social justice with a side of Jesus, Nadia Bolz-Weber has rebellious profanity laden biker chic with a side of Jesus. We have music with a side of Jesus and literary criticism with a side of Jesus. We don't even have any comedians (except maybe Brad Stein)...
Our humanities departments have produced no to tier painters, no top tier artists, no top tier poets, no top tier anything at all...and they are the most caustic, sarcastic, snarky, snide, passive aggresive, nitpicky, cynical people on the planet.
And they make nothing good...
We have produced few if any great up young philosophers. At best our young philosophers regurgitate and rehash Alvin Plantinga or William Lane Craig, at worst they revurgitate James Smith and John Caputo. They show no imagination, they offer nothing new, they have no fresh ideas.
We have no great cultural producers coming out of the humanities.
We have some good art coming from people who never studied art at a Christian College and thus avoided having their spark of creativity snuffed out by sub par Christian humanities education. Some, but not much...
All our humanities have to offer is stale, boring, Christianized knock offs of secular culture.
This is why we can't make anyhing that anyone cares about.
"I serve the Church!" they say.
No, you don't. Almost nobody in the church is blessed by anything you do.
Because we suck
I know one guy who is under 40, is a Christian, and has made music that has actually had an impact in the culture (He knows who he is).
It's one guy. God bless him though cause he's actually really good (no Christian Humanities education to snuff out that creative spark)
And, while I'm at it, there is one Young, very talented Christian Philosopher: @DavidDecosimo.
That guys is a machine. Creative and rigorous. He's very good. But again, he's just one guy, and he has little help.
See the problem?
We are going to lose the battle in the academy, and we deserve to lose.
That's it. We will lose, we deserve to lose.
Maybe in a generstion we will have some renewal, but right now we lack originality, creativity, vision, and talent. Our top tier people are few and far between.
So, yeah.
That was depressing to write. But it's true.
(If you make art and it doesn't suck drop it in the comments below so we can have hope for future generations. Please. I'm begging you. I really would like some hope)
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