“The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a story about the death of the American West. John Wayne does more than simply play the title character; he also serves as a clear symbol of the American spirit, and his heroic sacrifice in this film is John Ford’s meditation on the paradox of American individualism.

“Wayne plays Tom Doniphon, the only man tough enough to stand up to Liberty Valance, the local thug. It is the arrival of Ransom Stoddard, an idealistic lawyer, that forces Tom to shoot Liberty, and in the process he sacrifices his own happiness, his own way of life, and the woman he loves.

“The core of Wayne’s appeal is not his swagger or his charm, but his willingness to act and accept the consequences, even when it means the end of his own way of life. Although we see his character dead, largely forgotten, it is Stoddard’s wife who puts the cactus blossoms on his coffin, an unspoken confession of her own love for him. She speaks for us all. We may be married to the security and safety of Stoddard’s government, but John Ford reminds us that it is the cactus roses of Tom Doniphon that grow in the heart of everry Amwrican”

— Nicholas Tucker, a San Francisco–based filmmaker. His latest project is Do As I Say, based on Peter Schweizer’s bestselling book, at National Review

Remembering grandfathers of 1917, veterans of The Great War:

Paul Kuric

Peter Briese

Father Richard John Neuhaus has left us a remarkable book. Looking through it to prepare a review, I saw that I had highlighted almost the entire book!

To whet your appetite, let me quote  the conclusion at length, so that you might hurry off to get a copy

“Through the preceding chapters, these notes from exile have addressed various tasks of hope while living in Babylon. The life of faith has been depicted as a prolepsis of the promised New Jerusalem, the City of God in final tranquility. We examined the distinctively American understandings of life in exile, and the distinctively American ways of deluding ourselves that we have arrived home already. We celebrated progress, and we noted its sobering limits in the realm of morality.

“We tried to engage the atheists among our fellow-exiles in this foreign city whose provisional peace we together seek. And also those who, like Richard Rorty, would distance themselves from hope’s grief by means of liberal irony. In “Salvation Is from the Jews,” we underscored the ways in which our pilgrim path and “the story of the world” are uniquely and inextricably entangled with the people of Israel. Then we explored the politics by which we alien citizens can ameliorate some wrongs and advance a provisional measure of the common good, even in Babylon. Finally, in this last chapter, we considered the impossibility of hopelessness and why it is that to live is to live in hope….

“As Christians and as Americans, in this our awkward duality of citizenship, we seek to be faithful in a time not of our choosing but of our testing. We resist the hubris of presuming that it is the definitive time and place of historical promise or tragedy, but it is our time and place. It is a time of many times: a time for dancing, even if to the songs of Zion in a foreign land; a time for walking together, unintimidated when we seem to be a small and beleaguered band; a time for rejoicing in momentary triumphs, and for defiance in momentary defeats; a time for persistence in reasoned argument, never tiring in proposing to the world a more excellent way; a time for generosity toward those who would make us their enemy; and, finally, a time for happy surrender to brother death—but not before, through our laughter and tears, we see and hail from afar the New Jerusalem and know that it is all time toward home.”

There are some Christians who avoid seeing movies because they fear polluting their souls. Other Christians see every movie, convinced that nothing can harm them. If you know either of these types, The Message Behind the Movie. How to Engage with a Film without Disengaging Your Faith by Douglas M. Beaumont is for you. Continue Reading…

And Mark Steyn’s review:
The headline on the Washington Post review sums it up: “‘Passion’ Is A Gory Take On A Gentle Teacher’s Violent End”. Somebody’s confusing their Gospel with Godspell. A few days before the “violent end”, the gentle teacher had been hurling tables around in the temple. And, even if you overlook the rough stuff, rhetorically Christ was as forceful as He was gentle.

That’s the real argument over The Passion Of The Christ. It’s not between Christians and Jews, but between believing Christians and the broader post-Christian culture, a term that covers a large swathe from the media to your average Anglican vicar.  MORE

John A. D’Elia’s biography of George Eldon Ladd has rightly been hailed as the definitive look on the American theologian who brought evangelical Christian scholarship to “a place at the table” of the world’s great theologians of his day. Ladd’s books are not only required reading in most seminaries but are also sold in local church bookstores. He was a thinker whose mind attracts all Christians, regardless of the stage of their journey into the Kingdom of God. For once and for all George Eldon Ladd clarified what Jesus meant when he proclaimed that “the Kingdom of God is at hand.”

So powerful and compelling was Ladd’s insight that his theological position has taken shorthand form through out the world – the Kingdom of God is “already/not yet.”

But in A Place at the Table: George Eldon Ladd and the Rehabilitation of Evangelical Scholarship in America, Mr. D’Elia reveals the personal struggles behind the great mind:

“All of [Ladd’s personal problems] - the family issues, the excessive drinking, and the failure to achieve the academic success he craved-did little to alter Ladd’s theological position.” (165)

The biographies of many important men show the opposite - their personal lives playing a pivotal role in shaping ideas and actions. How could George Eldon Ladd’s life acquire so different a character?

The author was generous in answering my questions.

Continue Reading…

Billionaire weapons manufacturer Tony Stark’s announcement of his plan to beat his twenty-first century pruning hooks into modern day plowshares causes quite a stir. He freed himself from an Afghan cave controlled by ambitious warlord Raza, by constructing an impregnable, gravity-defying suit of armor from random weapons he finds in the cave. Now Tony sees that the weapons he has made for good have been used for ill by America’s enemies.

Tony, like some Americans, decides that the answer to war is to stop making pruning hooks.

Continue Reading…

Walt Kowalski is the dictionary definition of the angry old man. His wife has just died, his sons are estranged, his neighborhood is deteriorating, the country he fought for in Korea has vanished, except for the horrible memories of the war itself.

Who could guess what God could do with such a man?

Continue Reading…

While watching The Dark Knight with my son and wife, I found myself, at one point, saying aloud: “That’s just like A Tale of Two Cities!” Stefan had been reading the novel for school and I had reread it with him. And, as I finished Tim Keller’s The Reason for God, I found him noting that the climactic substitution in A Tale of Two Cities was just like Jesus’ action on our behalf. So maybe The Dark Knight proclaims the Good News as a twenty-first century metaphor, as A Tale of Two Cities did in a nineteenth century idiom.

Continue Reading…

The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.

We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty,
who is and who was,
for you have taken your great power and begun to reign.