Matthew Henry John Bartlett

Dr Bill Romanowksi from Calvin College is speaking at Wellington Central Baptist this coming Thursday (02/06/05) at 2-5pm and 7-9:30pm. The cost for each session is $20. Email Becky to register.
From the blurb:

Popular art and culture shapes the way we think about ourselves, about others, and about our place in society. It cannot be avoided. We are swimming in it. Movies, television, advertising, music… All of them are expressing ideas and beliefs about God, humanity, evil, and redemption. They offer a stream of attitudes and values regarding power, relationships, gender, sex, violence, and materialism. And the Christian response? There is everything from soap-box condemnation to uncritical acceptance, with so much of it ineffective and unsatisfying.
   Christians can be poor at identifying the positive redemptive aspects of popular culture. This then impairs both their participation in that culture and their constructive critique of it. So, in calling his book Eyes Wide Open he deliberately plays off the title of the Stanley Kubrick film Eyes Wide Shut. His point is that Christians need to have their eyes open when they take in this popular culture. There will be good things to preserve, bad things to improve, and ugly things to delete. And so they need to have a worldview that allows them to see, as Paul expresses it in Ephesians, with the ‘eyes of the heart’ – or, from the perspective of faith. Bill takes issue with Christians who draw lines between religious and non-religious aspects of life, an attitude that ultimately confines faith to the merely personal and private. This will not do and this visit to NZ by Bill will explore an alternative way forward.