Purewow for the week:

“Evangelical Retreat?” A must read on how the next generation of Evangelicals will (and won’t) engage culture.

 
A homework assignment that smacks of missional: JR Woodward provides questions that will help you exegete your neighborhood.

 
In general, we try to exercise the spiritual discipline of avoiding hatereads. So, it’s exciting when someone finds a respectful way to hold church leaders accountable for bad theology. Andrew Arndt thoughtfully corrects wrath-preachers by calling for a Christological reading of Scripture. Well done!

 
Alain de Botton, in a critique of art museums, says of its patrons, “No one’s got a clue what they’re supposed to be doing!” We don’t always like to bend things into a ecclesiological metaphor, but we read this article and immediately considered that many of our churches have the same problem. Without engagement and enactment, our worship services risk being non-transformative. Like de Botton says, “It’s too easy to ‘love art,’ and to not love the things that art actually loves.”

 
The Church of England is allowing for female bishops, which recalled to mind for us this N.T. Wright article on the difference between the Bible and societal “progress” as it relates to gender:

The resurrection of Jesus is the only Christian guide to the question of where history is going. Unlike the ambiguous “progress” of the Enlightenment, it is full of promise — especially the promise of transformed gender roles.

“Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline.” John Goerke reckoning G.K. Chesterton

 
A couple of weeks ago we published a blog post on the importance of a literary education. So it is with happiness that we direct you to this list of “50 Books That Define the Past Five Years in Literature.” Or if your sensibilities tend toward non-fiction . . . Or if its high time you put down other people’s books in favor of writing your own . . .

 
This week The Atlantic provided a couple good articles for those urbanologists among us: “The Gentrification Puzzle” and “The paradox of Diverse Communities”

 
Rick Santorum would like Republicans to be more like the Pope, “talking about the beauty of the faith and what the faith is for, as opposed to what the faith is against.”

 
Deep read: “Bruno Schulz: The Mythologization of Reality” (another H/T to @DavidDark)

 
Our quote of the week as it concerns time being a requisite for excellence. The power of sitting in a story: “One thing the Review won’t be trying to do? Break news. ‘We’re not trying to be what music publications have traditionally been,'” says Schreiber. “We’re trying to break free from this constant racing to be first, which we do online.” –Pitchfork

We know you all are constantly running across purewow. Want to see some of it included in our roundup? Out-purewow us, please! Send any articles you’d like to have posted here to elizabeth(at)thehousestudio(dot com).