“The Weekend Wanderer” is a weekly curated selection of news, stories, resources, and media on the intersection of faith and culture for you to explore through your weekend. Wander through these links however you like and in any order you like.

This past week, I was in the beautiful north woods of Wisconsin with my family at Fort Wilderness, where I had the privilege of serving as a speaker for one of their family camps. It was a wonderful time with others from various parts of the country, enjoying God’s stunning creation, building relationships, and walking through the book of Ruth. Hopefully you could visit Fort Wilderness sometime. I don’t think you would be disappointed. In the midst of a full week, with spotty internet connection (thankfully!), I had less opportunity to read online and, because of that, “The Weekend Wanderer” is a bit shorter this week.

 

“6 Works of Classical Music Every Christian Should Know” – Jeremy Begbie, professor of theology at Duke and specialist on the interface between theology and the arts, offers a primer on classical music for Christians. “Music can be a remarkable index of the profoundest impulses and stirrings of a culture—impulses and stirrings that are often theologically charged. What, then, of classical music in particular? Strictly speaking, ‘classical music’ is the music of a fairly brief era (roughly, the second half of the 18th century), but the term is commonly used to refer to the whole stream of music associated with European concert and operatic culture, emerging around 1600. Sometimes called ‘art music,’ it’s generally regarded as there to be listened to, not just heard….And the Christian can ask a further question: ‘What might I learn theologically from what’s going on here?'”

 

“Authenticity under Fire: Researchers are calling into question authenticity as a scientifically viable concept” – Everyone wants to be “real.” What does it mean, however, to be “real” or “authentic,” and is it a concept that can actually be measured? Scott Barry Kaufman reports on recent research calling into question the concept of authenticity. “Authenticity is one of the most valued characteristics in our society. As children we are taught to just ‘be ourselves’, and as adults we can choose from a large number of self-help books that will tell us how important it is to get in touch with our ‘real self’. It’s taken as a given by everyone that authenticity is a real thing and that it is worth cultivating. Even the science of authenticity has surged in recent years, with hundreds of journal articles, conferences, and workshops. However, the more that researchers have put authenticity under the microscope, the more muddied the waters of authenticity have become. Many common ideas about authenticity are being overturned. Turns out, authenticity is a real mess.”

 

“Christ in the Camps: Migrant children are suffering. Christians need to help.” – “I humbly reach out to the only faction of Americans I know of who have the ear of the administration and who care about children: my brothers and sisters in Christ who attend evangelical churches. It seems clear that we are in the midst of a profound humanitarian crisis and that children are being forced to suffer in terrible ways. Maybe it was never supposed to be this way; maybe the system just got overwhelmed. But this is a disaster. Children are programmed to think that any separation from a parent or a caregiver is a life-or-death situation. I keep imagining one of these children having a dream that he’s home, with his mother and brothers and sisters, but then waking up to see he’s still in a terrible place. If evangelical Christians stood up for these children, things could change in the camps very quickly.”

 

“Citizens Aren’t Just Born. They’re Formed” – Kevin den Dulk at Comment: “My university (yes: by press time Calvin College will be a university) recently crafted an ‘educational framework.’ Its purpose, as I understand it, is to ‘operationalize’ our primary mission. Three of its four categories of goals—’faith,’ ‘learning,’ and ‘vocation’—are standard fare for an institution of both higher learning and Christian persuasion. While the fourth category—’citizenship’—has a less obvious connection to mission, the thrust of the other three lead in its direction. A Christian university committed to learning and vocation ought to educate for citizenship, a calling none of us can escape. At least that’s my reading as a civic educator.”

“Solzhenitsyn: Politics and the Ascent of the Soul” – I have returned to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn again and again in the past few years. His insights are poignant and soulful in a secular age. Here’s Daniel J. Mahoney reflecting on the enduring legacy of Solzhenitsyn.  “As we rapidly move along in the twenty-first century, [Aleksandr] Solzhenitsyn, chronicler of the fate of the soul under both ideological despotism and, increasingly, a soft and relativistic democracy, very much remains our contemporary: a true friend of ‘liberty and human dignity,’ as Tocqueville put it, and a partisan of the human soul imparted to us by a just and merciful God.”

 

“Unscoured” – Alan Jacobs wrote an alternative ending to J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, which he shared at his blog. It is, well…worth reading.

 

Music: Asgeir, “Underneath It,” from Afterglow.

[I do not necessarily agree with all the views expressed within the articles linked from this page, but I have read them myself in order to make me think more deeply.]