Hollywood vs. America: Popular Culture and the War On Traditional Values, by Michael Medved (Harper Collins/Zondervan, 386 pp.; $20.00, hardcover). Reviewed by Doug LeBlanc, a writer living in Colorado Springs.
Jack Valenti, president of the Motion I Picture Association of America, told Los Angeles magazine that Michael Medved is “a singularly uninformed individual who leaps from soggy premises to stupid conclusions.” Valenti further assailed Medved as “a failed screenwriter who became a critic because … he couldn’t get his scripts produced.”
Any writer who generates such furious ad hominem attacks from Valenti must be doing something right. Indeed, Medved has been on to something since 1989, when he gave a talk at Hillsdale College in Michigan on the topic “Hollywood vs. Religion.” Since then, Medved has built a reputation among those with a more traditionalist bent for being an influential and dependable movie critic.
Hollywood vs. America compiles “Hollywood vs. Religion,” a subsequent Hillsdale lecture (“Popular Culture and the War Against Standards”), and Medved’s most recent critical thoughts into an eloquent and feisty book. Whether Hollywood’s dream merchants clean up their acts or continue their slide into mass-media nihilism, they can no longer claim ignorance of their sins.
Nihilism In Panavision
Medved relies on an impressive collection of statistics to prove a direct connection between explicit sex, gratuitous violence, and disastrous box-office results. Medved asks: “How could any industry that radically changed its focus and thereby permanently sacrificed nearly two-thirds of its audience be described, in any serious sense, as ‘following the money’? In presenting the bleak and bloody visions that trouble so many of our fellow citizens, the popular culture isn’t responding to some primitive blood lust of the American people; it is, rather, following its own warped conceptions of artistic integrity, driven by some dark compulsion beyond simple greed.”
As that paragraph suggests, Medved’s rhetoric sometimes gets overheated. Nevertheless, Hollywood vs. America is a crucial book in the culture wars. Medved diagnoses the misguided idealism that confuses shock value with artistic integrity and the contempt that many celebrities have for “flyover country” (everything between Los Angeles and New York).
The Best Dreams Of Our Hearts
Medved is an observant Jew in a predominantly secularist industry. He rails like a modern-day Jeremiah against the industry’s excesses. Like Jeremiah, he will likely be written off as a hopelessly outdated crank (as he has already been by Time, New York, and The New Yorker magazines).
Hollywood will dismiss Medved as a dangerous right-winger, a closet fan of censorship, or a homophobe. Anyone making those arguments with a straight face, however, will not have read the book. Medved clearly rejects censorship, calling on Hollywood to reform itself. He argues persuasively that many homosexuals in Hollywood make its better films, citing James Ivory and Ismail Merchant (A Room With a View, Howards End) as evidence.
Like his favorite director, Frank Capra, Medved is optimistic about America, about America’s people, and about Hollywood’s ability to produce worthwhile films.
“Instead of exploiting our nightmares, they could cultivate the best dreams of our hearts,” he writes of Hollywood’s powers that be. “Perhaps they might even entertain the notion that America deserves a popular culture as decent and as hopeful as the spirit of her people.”
Watch Medved’s career trajectory in the next year. Self-congratulating guardians of free speech will go after this courageous man with a vengeance. They may try to purge him from “Sneak Previews” on PBS. If Christians will not stand behind Medved, we will deserve every sequel of Friday the 13th and every film that portrays religious believers as buffoons.
The Megamall Of Biblical Scholarship
The Anchor Bible Dictionary, six volumes, editor-in-chief David Noel Freedman (Doubleday, $360, hardcover). Reviewed by Daniel G. Reid, coeditor of Dictionary of Christianity in America (InterVarsity).
As the publishers are quick to point out, it has been 30 years since the last major English-language Bible dictionary was published. They are speaking of the top-shelf, four-volume Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (1962) to which was added a fifth, supplementary volume in 1976. (This is not to speak of the appearance of a major revision of the venerable International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, 1979–88.) A lot has happened in biblical studies in the past three decades, and this reference work is an impressive monument to that scholarly labor and discovery, as well as to its dazzling diversity of expertise and perspective in the field. Short of a generous sabbatical leave to peruse the whole, a reviewer can only hope to nibble and taste here and there.
They could have called it The Anchor Dictionary of Biblical and Cognate Studies. Given the impressive mass of this work (over 7,000 pages, more than 6,000 entries, and in excess of 7,000,000 words), it is surprisingly lean on what we might call biblical-theological topics. But it is a mother lode of information on every sort of background topic imaginable. Would you like to know about a town in the central Negeb named Sobata? It is never mentioned in the Bible, but the ABD will serve you up over six columns of fine-print, written by Avraham Negev, whose entries listed in the article’s bibliography indicate that no one is likely to know more about Sobata than he. Or perhaps the Safaitic inscriptions from the Syro-Arabian desert have always intrigued you. Again, you will not be disappointed (over ten columns and a rich bibliography).
But if you are preparing a series of talks on prayer and would like to fortify your knowledge of the subject, you are apt to be frustrated. Deep in the P’s you will find articles on “Prayer in Early Judaism” and “Prayers, Hellenistic Synagogal.” And you will be pointed to a detailed article in the L’s on the “Lord’s Prayer.” But where are the articles on “Prayer in the Old Testament” and “Prayer in the New Testament”? There are none.
Or perhaps you would like something on “Gospel” (as in “good news”), or “Church,” or “Reconciliation,” or “Israel in the New Testament,” or “Lord” as a Christological title. Sorry, in every case; and there are no cross-reference entries to articles where they might be discussed. (Cross references within articles are in relatively short supply, but an index volume is in production.)
On the other hand, the articles on “Righteousness” in the Old Testament, in early Judaism, in the Greco-Roman world, and in the New Testament are wonderfully complete. And a reading of “Justification” will bring you alongside the most recent thinking in Pauline scholarship. Furthermore, one of the great features of the ABD is the individual articles on a multitude of Jewish documents of the New Testament era, including the individual Dead Sea Scrolls. As with the IDB, no doubt as readers become familiar with the volumes classic essays will emerge.
The unevenness of coverage is the only truly frustrating feature in this megamall of biblical scholarship. How can we account for this? For those who read the preface and introduction, there is enough said to surmise that more articles were assigned but not written. The silences may be taken as mute testimonies to the editor’s cross—standing in the gap between a scholar’s dream and a publisher’s realities. Those who indulge in the dream may wish the publisher had granted an extra year or two to the project.
Generally speaking, this Dictionary is a product of the university, not the church. And it bears that perspective not only in the make-up of its editorial team and the selection of its most eminent contributors, but also in its presentation of topics and coverage. The emphasis on the specialized fields of texts, languages, archaeology, social institutions, and cultural history also testifies to developments within biblical and ancient Near Eastern studies. As associate editor Gary A. Herion writes in the introduction, there “is a certain reluctance to place a given topic within a larger picture—to provide the sweeping and definitive synthesis that some readers desire and expect in a dictionary of the Bible.”
Let’s come clean. This is no reference work for beginners. For one thing, the world of biblical scholarship is perplexing to the uninitiated, and—for the most part—this Dictionary makes few concessions to novices. For another, the Dictionary is framed by a critical methodology and perspective that will not wear well with readers who do not expect to have to count their Isaiahs. While the number of evangelical scholars who have contributed to this work far surpasses the number who contributed to the old IDB, with few exceptions their essays do not take center stage. (But some of the exceptions are noteworthy—to name a couple: A. R. Millard on “Abraham” and K. A. Kitchen on the “Exodus.”) But astute seminarians, learned pastors, and a few ambitious lay people will find the Anchor Bible Dictionary a welcome informant on a host of subjects related to biblical studies.
Are Fundamentalists All Alike?
Fundamentalisms Observed, edited by Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, (University of Chicago Press, xvi + 872 pp.; $40, hardcover). Reviewed by John G. Stackhouse, Jr., associate professor of modern Christianity in the Department of Religion, the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada.
It was pretty dim at first. I was ploughing through an opaque volume on conservative Buddhism in southeast Asia for a graduate class in world religions. But then something in the description of a particular Buddhist group shone through with a light of familiarity. This group of leaders was acting like the elders in a church I had once belonged to. Their fixed attitude toward young people, toward new ideas and innovative practices, and toward dissent of any sort was the same old story I had seen several times before.
Something of this sense of recognition lies behind this massive volume and the even more massive Fundamentalism Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that sponsored it. The fundamental contention of the project, so to speak, is that there is a pattern of religious life common to a wide variety of religious traditions that can be called “conservative,” “reactionary,” “counteracculturationist,” or “radical neotraditionalist.” Moreover, this pattern, called “fundamentalist,” for want of a better term and with no pejorative intent, deserves serious and sustained academic study.
This, the first volume of a projected six, presents a series of case studies. Pithy introductory and concluding chapters by the editors define, refine, and reflect in general upon the particulars rendered by the intervening essays. Subsequent volumes will offer comparisons across traditions and trace the efforts of modern fundamentalisms on cultures around the world.
Each chapter is written by a recognized specialist. The first chapter, which outlines the “paradigm case” of North American Protestant fundamentalism, perhaps can indicate something of the quality of the others. In it, Nancy Ammerman sets things out serviceably enough (although Canadians will again protest that their country is not just an extension of the U.S.). Enlisting a “moderate” Southern Baptist sociologist to write this chapter rather than a historian of evangelicalism seems an odd choice, and specialists will be disappointed by some details of Ammerman’s account that others would have understood better. It is, however, generally accurate, comprehensive, and concise, and so are the other three on Christianity in the Americas.
As the book moves through Judaism to Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Japanese culture, one’s own tradition is cast into fresh relief. As one reads of fundamentalists of another faith endorsing powerful, even radical, political options in their context, one sees the New Christian Right as less of a surprise than perhaps it first appeared to be. As one reads of non-Christian fundamentalists sponsoring comprehensive educational programs in order to keep their offspring in the faith and the larger world out of it, one looks again at the actual functions of Christian schools, Sunday schools, and parachurch youth organizations. And as one reads of fundamentalists of another faith selectively appropriating certain features of modern life, such as communications technologies, precisely in order to defend their “old time religion,” one becomes more aware of the ambiguities in Christian fundamentalism today.
At least one crucial lesson comes out of this comparative reading. The struggle to preserve the “one, true faith” is not a Christian struggle only. The forces of modernity press upon all traditions impartially. The corollary to this is that the mechanisms by which groups respond to these challenges will often be similar. Thus what some may resent (or respect) about Protestant fundamentalism may not be specifically Christian at all. It may just be a typical way that leaders exercise authority in certain kinds of hierarchies. It may just be a typical way that groups huddle together in the storms of modern life. It may not be sacred and it may not be diabolical. It may be simply human.
As such, understanding fundamentalisms not only may reward the scholar of religion. It also can put things in perspective for those who have known them from within. And such understanding, as a variety of religions attest, is a form of enlightenment.
Why Bach And Mozart Made A Joyful Noise
The Spiritual Lives of Great Composers, by Patrick Kavanaugh (Sparrow, 119 pp.; $12.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Steve Rabey, religion editor, Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph.
The extent of many Christians’ experience of classical music includes vague ideas about the origins of some of our best-loved hymns and annual goose-bump-inducing encounters with Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus.
Patrick Kavanaugh thinks that is a crime. But the conductor and performer who serves as executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Performing Artists Fellowship does not whack our fingers, as an angry old music teacher might. Instead, he beguiles and inspires us with 12 catchy, user-friendly essays exploring the deepest spiritual motivations of some of the towering figures of classical music.
Handel, along with Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Haydn, Liszt, Dvorak, Wagner, Schubert, Ives, Stravinsky, and Mendelssohn, springs to life in these brief but well-rounded portraits of the artists’ lives and souls. These portraits differ from those in heftier biographies because of both Kavanaugh’s dogged pursuit of revealing anecdotes and his conclusion that “the composers are, as a group, surprisingly and often deeply religious.” Kavanaugh’s profile of the star-crossed prodigy Mozart, for example, differs radically from the image painted in the multiple Academy Awardwinning 1984 film Amadeus. Instead of the movie’s caricature of a raunchy rock-’n’-roll-style symphonic sensation, Kavanaugh shows us a devout son of pious Catholic parents who sought God’s guidance for his amazing talents. Mozart composed some of his greatest works (e.g., Mass in C Major) as the result of sacred vows to God.
But this is not a book of fawning hagiography. “These were real human beings, often coping with very difficult circumstances and with their share of human failings,” writes Kavanaugh. At least a few of the composers’ halos are slightly askew. Liszt, for example, “was a fervent Christian all his life and even entered the priesthood when he was in his fifties.” But he was also “an incorrigible womanizer” who “led a life of epic sensual self-indulgence.”
And Wagner worked on massive religious works, such as Jesus of Nazareth and The Love Feast of the Twelve Apostles, but rejected the Old Testament, had a weakness for anti-Semitism, and believed Jesus was part of a vegetarian community founded by Pythagoras!
But the book also contains plenty of faith stories that are less ambiguous, such as that of Bach, who wrote, “Music’s only purpose should be for the glory of God and the recreation of the human spirit”; or that of Dvorak, who wrote, “Do not wonder that I am so religious. An artist who is not could not produce anything like this.”
Christians are to reclaim all facets of our world for Christ. Perhaps this book will inspire others to wrestle with how the church can foster the faith and artistry of today’s Bachs and Mozarts.
Vote in the other November election: the Christianity Today Readers’-choice Book Awards. We need your help identifying the book that has had the most significant impact on the evangelical community in the past year. Please choose from the list of publisher-nominated books for this year’s contest or write in your own choice. The results will be published in our April 5, 1993, issue.
We would also like to hearhow books have influenced your Christian life. In addition to answering the questions below, you may wish to share an anecdote.
To vote, just mark your ballot, tearout this sheet, and mail it by January 1, 1993, to:
Who is your favorite living Christian author?
What book (other than the Bible) has had the most significant impact on your Christian life?
What is your favorite novel of all time?
Publishers’ Nominations
101. Abortion Rites: A Social History of Abortion in America, Marvin Olasky
102. And the Angels Were Silent, Max Lucado
103. Bold Love: Life’s Ultimate Influence, Dan Allender, Tremper Longman III
104. Churches That Abuse, Ronald Enroth
105. Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight, I. Howard Marshall, eds.
105. Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight, I. Howard Marshall, eds.
106. Dismantling Racism: The Continuing Challenge to White America, Joseph Barndt
107. Extending the Table, Joetta Handrich Schlabach
108. Finding the Love of Your Life, Neil Warren
109. Hidden Value of a Man: The Incredible Impact of a Man on His Family, Gary Smalley, John Trent
110. History of Christianity in the U.S. and Canada, Mark A. Noll
111. Laugh Again: Experience Outrageous Joy, Charles R. Swindoll
112. Living by the Book, Howard G. Hendricks, William D. Hendricks
113. Living on the Border of Disorder, Dan O’Neill, Cherry B. O’Neill
114. Lord, Is It Warfare? Teach Me To Stand, Kay Arthur
115. Lord, Where Are You When Bad Things Happen? Kay Arthur
116. Miracle Man, Nolan Ryan with Jerry B. Jenkins
117. Power of Vision: How You Can Capture and Apply God’s Vision for Your Ministry, George Barna
118. Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, Richard J. Foster
119. Prepare Your Church for the Future, Carl F. George
120. Prophet, Frank Peretti
121. Racing Toward 2001: The Forces Shaping America’s Religious Future, Russell Chandler
122. Rediscovering Holiness, J. I. Packer
123. Reformed Spirituality, Howard L. Rice
124. Splashes of Joy in the Cesspools of Life, Barbara Johnson
125. Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse, Jeff Van Vonderen, David Johnson
126. Tapestry of Life, Nancy Corbett Cole
127. To Make the Wounded Whole: The Cultural Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., Lewis V. Baldwin
128. Transforming Leadership, Leighton Ford
129. Wake Up America!, Tony Campolo
130. Way Out of the Wilderness: How Biblical Heroes Are Models for Your Recovery, Earl Henslin
131. When Is It Right To Die? Suicide, Euthanasia, Suffering, Mercy, Joni Eareckson Tada
132. When Love Is Not Enough, Stephen Arterburn, Jim Burns
133. Other:
