The Rise of Evangelicalism

I recently finished reading Mark Noll's book, The Rise of Evangelicalism.


This is my review for Amazon.com:

This book was very handy for me in getting a good big picture of the beginnings of Evangelicalism. Dr. Noll's narrative stitches together a clear story, which is easy enough to follow despite the movement's spread across the Atlantic and separation into various (sometimes rivaling) groups. I was especially helped by the comprehensive breadth of the work. Being raised in nondenominational Evangelical Christianity, I had a fuzzy picture of much of the early denominational history of the movement, especially of the Wesleyans and Moravians. I appreciated Dr. Noll's insight into how these groups related to each other and to the Calvinistic wing of Evangelicalism. Another particularly interesting segment was the discussion of the movement's complex relationship with the religious establishment, especially in Britain and New England. I found this placed the whole movement in a clearer setting of American and English history. I look forward to getting hold of the rest of the series.

So, I've moved on through The All-New Square-Foot Gardening book and What to Drink with What You Eat, which I got for Christmas. Maybe I'll review those too, since we have internet now.

Approaching a Method for Interacting with Media

I have a method in mind for guiding my interactions with media, and I will lay out something of that method ahead of time here:
Questions
I began with a list of questions. It was about 3 pages long, and no where near long enough to really get at what an artistic, informational, entertaining work is all about. I would need ten or more pages before I really had the makings of the questions we ought to be asking of the things we watch, listen to, or read. This was not working out very well. I went to sleep after typing those questions in a bit of a tizzy, because I knew that no one, including myself or my kids, would want to sit down with a wall of questions getting between them and the most recent Deadliest Catch. This was not going to work.
After a day or two of running various errands, I was going to bed last night, lamenting to Amelia that I had no means of approaching my goals of critical, involved, Christianly media feasting. I said, “I need something organic.” That is, I needed something which lined up with our minds' aesthetic; which made simple sense and could 'click' with most people. So we talked for a while, and began thinking about the basic processes that need to be in place for a mind to really begin to engage the world in the way I had fuzzily envisioned. So, in the end, I have scrapped the questionnaire idea, and I am trying to move on with the concept of a tool-set for critical engagement in media interactions.
Tools
So, I will try laying out a few of the tools which are necessary for these interactions. First, there is the goal of a Holistic Experience. I mean that my interactions with the world via media should intentionally seek to include, not only the physical sensations of watching or listening, but also some types of mental, emotional, and volitional engagement. (I obviously take this from the great commandment, “Love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.”) I think that I will be able to break down these four spheres of personal involvement in life in the ensuing few posts, and thereby find some of these tools with which to arm ourselves.
So, we can look at the cycle of inductive and deductive processes, the layers of context in which every datum resides, and the steps of interpreting a document (Kay Arthur-style: observing, interpreting, and applying, but with major adjustments). These would all be part of our mental interaction with media. We could also try to analyze and better understand our emotional interaction by looking at the way different media approach our hearts, and we can look at what Scripture and Scriptural theology teach us about why our hearts respond to certain messages. I would also like to break down the physical elements of various media, and see how our wills are affected by the media with which we interact. In all things, I would like to be seeking this holistic experience, in which these various spheres come together in a whole-self interaction with things outside ourselves, all in happy obedience to the great commandment.


There is the goal for this study, and the beginning of a method. Perhaps God will be pleased to see us through to some profitable outcome for his people.