Unpop Culture

With the publication of my essay “When Art Becomes Sinful” in the book Cultural Engagement (Zondervan, 7/9/19), I am now working to further promote an often-overlooked message that seems to hit a nerve every time I write about it. Toward that end, I am creating an online course that will help people find greater clarity and freedom in addressing entertainment choices with hypersexual content (nudity, sex scenes, etc.). This material will enable Christians to better understand, evaluate, and engage with sexualized media. Some content from previous blog posts and articles will be repurposed, but a large portion of the material in this course will be completely new. Beta testing of the course will commence in a month or two, during which a select and generous group of authors, pastors, and artists have agreed to provide me with feedback. As it now stands, this material will be divided into 12 lessons. Each lesson will include the following components: 1) Video content ...

It’s not every day you get to announce the official release of a book you contributed to. As many of you know, I’ve had the privilege of working with Drs. Joshua Chatraw and Karen Swallow Prior on an anthology about Christian engagement with cultural beliefs. Dr. Prior asked me to contribute an essay a year and a half ago, and it has been a tremendous pleasure and privilege to be involved in this project. The book, Cultural Engagement: A Crash Course in Contemporary Issues , releases today. It explores nine controversial topics—sexuality, gender roles, human life & reproductive technology, immigration & race, creation & creature care, politics, work, the arts, and warfare & capital punishment—from a variety of angles. Contributors to the book include Makoto Fujimura, Rod Dreher, Rosaria Butterfield, Andy Crouch, Joe Carter, and Katelyn Beaty. There is a wide range of beliefs represented in this book, not because all positions are equally valid, but because ...