Unpop Culture

The more things stay the same, the less they change—and that’s how I like it. Even so, and though I’ve fought the need for changing my writing modus operandi , the time has come for me to acknowledge the limitations of blogging . These days, more people are preferring to limit their online intake to social media and email subscriptions. Thus, in order to continue growing my audience, I have decided to make a change: I will be using Substack as my go-to home for new posts. This setup will allow you to more easily access my writing, as each new post will be delivered to you via email. In my very first blog post (published in January of 2006 ), I gave a few reasons for starting my own blog. With some tweaking and condensing, those reasons apply to my new venture into newsletter writing: 1) Everyone else is doing it 2) If I am to maintain my individuality, I must conform to the status quo 3) As a writer, I am motivated to hone my skills while utilizing strategic platforms 4) As an activist...

Four score and seven years ago (or so it seems), I staked my claim on a small corner of cyberspace . The actual date when I began my blog? January 16, 2006. The actual title of the blog? Well, Four Scores and Seven Films Ago . This title captured my love of three elements: instrumental film scores, movies, and American history (with an obvious nod to Abraham Lincoln). The aesthetic of the blog reflected its title, with an intentionally dated, parchment-paper look. Seven years later, in January of 2013, I gave the blog a serious facelift . The generic blogging URL was replaced with a custom domain name, and the original title replaced with the shorter, and more ambiguous, Happier Far . (I lifted this phase from a gospel moment in Paradise Lost , the epic poem by John Milton.) The new blog title fit the theological bent of my writings at the time. The new template also reflected a more modern aesthetic. Of course, over seven more years have passed (just over eight, actually), and the ...

It’s not every day you get to hear a VeggieTales character read one of your articles out loud. Okay, so it was actually Phil Vischer (the voice of Bob the Tomato) who highlighted my recent piece, If You’re Fighting the Culture War, You’re Losing . More on that in a moment. In the article, published at The Gospel Coalition, I ask this question: “Is a warlike posture the proper response to an increasingly anti-Christian society?” The problem with the culture-war approach is not that it (rightly) discerns opposition from the world. The problem is in the chosen mode of response.   By embracing the culture-war paradigm, many Christians adopt—likely inadvertently—an “all’s fair in love and war” perspective. After all, in a war you don’t turn the other cheek; you strike back as hard, or harder, than your opponent. That’s how wars are won. . . .   To engage with our culture in a militant and hostile manner is to forsake our role as ambassadors. It’s trading our diplomatic ...