New Website 10/04/2009
 
ok, so now I have done it. Finally. Here is my new website

http://christ-and-culture.info.

I was thinking how to call it:

>> christ-and-culture
>> faith-and-culture
>> theology-and-culture
>> somethingelese-and-youknowwhat...

But then I decided to go for this one. Not only because of Niebuhr's book title - though I readily admitt that reading it has been a great inspiration to me, about two years ago.
I was also very much drawn to "faith-and-culture", because that stresses my own -human - perspective a man of - sometimes too little, help me Lord! -  faith. Christian faith, that is.
Finally, I also did consider "theology-and-culture" - but it sounds too official, too technical. Indeed, this may be what I will be doing, mostly. And yet, for me theology has got no meaning -apart from faith.
Another possibility would have been "theology-and-film", because that will be, by and large, my starting point. But only the starting point, so why confine myself too much? I can already envisage "theology-and-multimedia" as the next step, and who knows, what will follow...

Now, there are two reasons, why I am doing this:
one: because I always wanted to explore the area of Christian faith and modern (mass)media: their interrelationship, the tensions, issues, opportunities...
two: because in my last year of studies at UNISA (doing Bachelor of Theology, BTh) I need to do a so-called "capstone module"...
[more about all this in a future blog entry]

I will - within a very short time, the next 200 hours or so - dump most of what I have developed in my head, on scaps of paper, in half-finished files, papers etc - to this site, to document some the thoughts, insights and ideas that have become impotant to me, when I think about this question:

"How does my Christian faith motivate and move me to read cultural "statements" like films, videos, webpages, books, magazines and other expressions - and to communicate and express myself in these sorts of media?"