Rodney Clapp
Our stalker culture: The celebrity craze
We’re all stalkers now. We are virtual stalkers, for we can obsessively track the joys and mishaps of celebrities via the 24/7 news cycle.
...Tools of the trade: A writer's necessities
Avoid haphazard writing materials. A pedantic adherence to certain papers, pens, inks is beneficial....
Health money can't buy: Beyond the purview of the market
The intense debates over health-care reform have brought to mind some poignant memories. When my father was in his early 40s he was diagnosed with terminal cancer....
The world next door: A new phenomenon in the heartland
There is a new phenomenon in the heartland. As far as I know, it is little observed and has not yet been named. I will call it rural cosmopolitanism.
...Summer in the city: Boundary-crossing music
If, as Karl Barth said, God may speak through a blossoming shrub or a dead dog, I reckon God may be found at rock festivals....
Scene of the crime: Television's longing for justice
Forensics television is more than gory titillation and casual senationalism. These programs scratch at religious itches: they try to see beyond death and long for ultimate justice.
Blest be the ties that bind: Churchly belonging
While I never suffered the childhood trauma of parents getting divorced, I know as an adult what it is like to suffer with a divided family. That is because I am an Episco palian....
There's a word for it: A collection of neologisms
New inventions often result in new words, or neologisms. Radar, for instance, emerged as an acronym for a “radio detection and ranging” device....
Bad news evangelicals: Reactionary evangelicalism needs to be born again
For a practice to qualify as “evangelical” in the functional sense means first of all that it communicates news....
In tune with the universe: The staple food of the soul
For Christians (as for religious people of various sorts), music is a basic human activity. We cannot live without worshiping, and we cannot worship without making music....
No problem after all: Better than "You're welcome"
In recent years, “No problem” has become a customary response to a “Thank you” rendered to wait staff, service providers, hosts and gift givers....
Celestial navigation: We have lost the sky
It was Marshall McLuhan, I believe, who first observed that the increased speed of transportation and communication had made the world a global village. That observation has become a commonplace....
A theological rationale for government: Human depravity necessitates accountability
The frightening downturn on Wall Street has caused even some staunch antigovernment pundits to begin rethinking their assumption that all government regulation is bad....
In the autumn shadows: God gomes to us
Autumn arrives September 22 (in the Northern Hemisphere). If you are like me, you depart reluctantly from summer, the season of light....
Lessons from Batman: Can we live with justice, peace and truth?
Every Batman story explores the nature of good and evil—or more specifically the often blurry line between the two. The Dark Knight takes the Batman-Everyman story in fresh directions, ones germane to a world confronted with terrorism. The movie raises the question: What is worse or more demonic: a terrorist with principles (even if that principle is nothing grander than accumulating more and more money) or one without?
Lessons in prayer, from a dog
He assumes his still posture
two feet from the table.
He is not grabby,
his tongue is not hanging out,
he is quiet.
He wants to leap,
he wants to snap up...
Dan Brown's truthiness
In a culture supersaturated with information, overwrought and overstimulated by media, none of us is immune to the allure of truthiness. With our attention stretched thin and largely confined to the surface, we are forced back on our intuition, to some reflexive sense of what “feels true.” Enter The Da Vinci Code. With the benefit of hindsight we can say the novel got noticed because of able marketing, and because it played into the manic milieu of truthiness.
Hollow pledge: The problem with 'under God'
The Supreme Court’s June ruling on whether “under God” should be part of the Pledge of Allegiance passed with relatively little notice, since the case was rejected on procedural grounds....
God as Santa: Misreading the prayer of Jabez
Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, “Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from hur...