The Humanitas Forum

Boredom is the all-encompassing name we give our discontent in this late modern age.  Boredom gained prominence as a social condition in the 18^th century when the word was invented, according to Patricia Meyer Spacks, author of Boredom: …

“We shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us” wrote communications expert Marshall McLuhan in the early 1960s.  His assessment of the various communications media (radio, television, movies, telephones, and computers) was simply, “We become what we behold.”…

 “The Hunger Games and the Gospel” is the theme of two talks by Dr. Ted Sherman in The Humanitas Forum on Christianity & Culture, February 13 & 14.  In an effort to better understand popular …

Starting again with G. K. Chesterton: “If the characters are not wicked, the book is.”

We still live in the shadow of the enormous cultural change that Chesterton wrote about almost exactly one hundred years ago.  While his …

Two revolutions have radically altered the way families think about the meaning of the “home.”  The technological revolution currently extends and broadens the impact of the industrial revolution.  As a result, prevailing family practices create tension with a …

If we all think for a moment, we all know them—the “queen bees and homecoming kings” who sadly slip off their pedestals by their mid-twenties.  “What happened to so-and-so?” is probably the most frequently asked question at …

In popular culture we live and move and have our being.  This observation by theologian Robert Banks is hard to argue with since American society has very little of what has historically been called high culture.  In agreement, …

Dress, manners and morals.  Isn’t it possible that we’ve lost something in our current culture of casual?  Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that, with casual as an almost universal guiding principle, we live in an age of “sloppy …

“‘They grow up so fast’ used to be a wistful sigh; now it’s a panicked cry for help from parents watching their 10-year-old daughters critique Miley Cyrus’s twerking and discuss oral sex with their friends.”

Thus runs the caption …

To the worm in horse radish, the whole world is horse radish, runs the old Yiddish proverb.  The same might be said of Americans and popular culture.  Since it’s all we know, it’s quite often invisible.

Unfortunately, …