Thursday, March 19, 2009

Read and Learn -- Popular Culture Visit

In the last week two things have really caught my eye. The first was Kings a new NBC series based on the life of King David. The second was the current Time magazine cover story called, Ten Ideas Changing the World Right Now. What I found so interesting about the Time magazine story was that Idea #3 is -- The New Calvinism.

I can't say that I am very impressed with either of them, frankly. That isn't really the point. (By the way, if you missed Kings it is now available free on www.hulu.com. Another piece of pop culture to get used to.) I am kind of impressed with NBC's choice in Kings and I find the choices being made to make it work interesting. I also think both of these things present a fabulous opportunity to talk about faith, religion and even that hard to deal with Old Testament and doctrinal stuff.

Although, so far, my favorite part has been the reviews of Kings. Being a life-long member of the Bible belt, I am really astonished at how little some people know of the life of King David and how unwilling they are to check the facts before writing a review destined for a major newspaper. Check out this review by Tim Goodman from San Francisco. This author clearly knows the basics of the David and Goliath story. He also clearly doesn't know that it is part of a whole, bigger story.

I thought it might be interesting to see what parts of these stories you find are the most interesting and how you plan on using them to address pop culture. So, comments anyone?

JusticeSeeker
JusticeSeekerOK@aol.com

1 comment:

Stushie said...

I enjoyed the pilot, but I'm guessing it may get more seedier as the series develops.