21st Century Enlightenment
…discussed by Matthew Taylor
3 Responses to “21st Century Enlightenment”
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Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
In an increasingly secularised society few people have a good working knowledge of the Bible. Yet a great deal of our culture is built on stories or ideas that come from the Bible. Literature, art, music, language and even the fabric of our society - such as our justice system - are built on Christian concepts and biblical references. The Writing on the Wall provides a fascinating introduction to the Bible's best-known, and most influential, stories. Each chapter gives some background to the text of the Bible, and shows how the stories have become enmeshed in Western culture. Adam and Eve, the ten plagues of Egypt, The Prodigal Son and Mary Magdalene all feature - along with how the Bible has influenced everyone from Shakespeare to Monty Python, and Caravaggio to Banksy. 
Giving It Up explores the Lenten idea of 'giving up', taking it beyond the traditional idea of simply abstaining from something, and suggesting instead that what we need to give up is our existing ideas about God. With a daily readings for each day of Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, it follows the heroes of the Bible who had to give up their own too-small ideas about God.
This is Maggi’s bestselling book of daily readings for each day of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. Advent is the beginning of the Church year, and marks the anticipation of the coming Messiah. These readings explore how beginnings and endings in our own lives are illuminated by the different Gospel narratives of Christ's coming.
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Very interesting vid, both in terms of communication method (how much work to produce a cartoon, and the set its production to an audio track?) and in terms of the looked for new humanism. Most of the way through I just felt like shouting out, “have you read the New Testament?”
I think it must be my age, but I needed two goes to appreciate this video properly – I found the animation too fast to keep focus with the speaker. Otherwise a brilliant attempt to raise issues, and I am very tempted to buy the pdf download so that I can so the whole cartoon at once.
My reaction to the content was similar to Jonathan’s, but the animation lays out some interesting ground to draw out the contribution and challenges that the NT (and Hebrew scriptures, too) can bring to this project.
“..I can see the whole cartoon..”