Quote for the Day
I am certainly no judge of television, since I have never watched it. All I know is that there is a sufficiently general agreement, among men whose judgment I respect, that commercial television is degraded, meretricious and absurd. Certainly it would seem that TV could become a kind of unnatural surrogate for contemplation: a completely inert subjection to vulgar images, a descent to a sub-natural passivity rather than an ascent to a supremely active passivity in understanding and love. It would seem that television should be used with extreme care and discrimination by anyone who might hope to take interior life seriously.
— Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
Going Up?
Going Up?
By Zehnder
Monster Palm Entertainment, 2008
Review by Carl McColman
A generation ago, Christian rock pioneer Larry Norman plaintively wondered, “Why should the devil have all the good music?” Those of us who were around when Norman was in his prime — and who have watched Christian music evolve from the naivetë of the early “Jesus Music” years (think 2nd Chapter of Acts and early Phil Keaggy), through the awkward adolescent years (Stryper!!!) to the perfectly enjoyable if more predictable than exciting adult-oriented-rock sound of today’s bands like Kutless, Third Day and Switchfoot — might paraphrase that question today as, “Why do the conservatives have all the good Christian music?” You know, I like artists like Amy Grant, Rebecca St. James, and Sara Groves just fine — but beneath their conspicuously apolitical music is a genre that, at least by its consumer demographics, seems pretty much a Republican bastion. If guys like Norman and Keaggy and Randy Stonehill and Keith Green managed thirty years ago to wrestle the good music away from ol’ Mr. Scratch, then who is going to snatch today’s faith-based music from its right-wing ghetto?
The answer, I believe, is Tim and Tom Zehnder.
These brothers are in the music ministry business — you can find them most Sunday mornings leading the worship at Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles. But they’re also the leaders of a band that bears their last name, which just released a CD called Going Up? featuring 45 minutes of joyously infectious — and unapologetically progressive — faith-based music. (more…)
