Frederica Mathewes-Green is a wide-ranging author who has published 11 books and 800 essays, in such diverse publications as the Washington Post, Christianity Today, Smithsonian, and the Wall Street Journal. She has been a regular commentator for National Public Radio (NPR), a columnist for the Religion News Service, Beliefnet.com, and Christianity Today, and a podcaster for Ancient Faith Radio. (She was also a consultant for Veggie Tales.) She has published 11 books, and has appeared as a speaker over 600 times, at places like Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Wellesley, Cornell, Calvin, Baylor, and Westmont, and received a Doctor of Letters (honorary) from King University. She has been interviewed over 700 times, on venues like PrimeTime Live, the 700 Club, NPR, PBS, Time, Newsweek, and the New York Times. She lives with her husband, the Rev. Gregory Mathewes-Green, in Johnson City, TN. Their three children are grown and married, and they have fifteen grandchildren.
[Christianity Today Online, October 9, 2004]
As four-letter words become an ever more popular form of communication, it's hardly surprising that athletes might use them, or that one might slip out in a TV interview. NBC's Matt Yocum had just asked Dale Earnhardt Jr. how it felt to win a race at the Talladega Superspeedway for the fifth time, and he replied modestly that his famous dad, Dale Earnhardt Sr, had won there ten times. “It don't mean s---,” he said.
The sky fell in.
[National Review Online, October 12, 2004]
Toward the end of “I [Heart] Huckabees,” the “existential detective” Vivian Jaffe (Lily Tomlin) is talking with a client. As the camera swings back her way we discover that she has unexpectedly taken out a pair of large, bone-colored knitting needles and is busily working some black yarn. This startling visual distraction must mean something (recall Chekhov's famous dictum that a gun seen in the first act must be fired in the next), so the viewer immediately does a mental Google on “knitters.” Top result is Dickens' cruel Madame Defarge. Compare and contrast: Vivian Jaffe is like Mme Defarge in these ways; she is not like her in those ways.
[National Review Online, September 27, 2004]
Just as the fire department tells us we should rehearse what we'd do in case of fire (planning escape routes, designating a safe meeting place), disaster movies do us the psychological service of forcing a quick march through “the worst that could happen.” At the end we see that you win a few, you lose a few, some cars are up in trees, and only the most attractive of the young people have survived. This should have the effect of sending us straight from the theaters to our Stairmasters, but instead we head straight for the comfort food, judging by the looks of the crowd that shows up at the next disaster movie. We can't say they didn't warn us.
[Beliefnet, September 17, 2004]
Last night found me yelling at the television once again over a panel discussion about “science and religion.” Both sides thought that rational processes can only take us so far in the journey to faith (agreed). After that, people turn to some other resource in order to connect with God (so far so good). What they use is their emotions.
Around my house, that’s when the sputtering starts. Only in the realm of religion is it assumed that every experience is a subjective experience, which means it’s an emotional projection—which means: Look, dear, a lunatic.
[National Review Online, September 17, 2004]
The most distinctive thing about “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” is the thing you need to forget right away. It's the thing you probably know already: everything in this movie is a fake.
That's not unusual, of course; there's a reason “Hollywood” is an adjective. But this movie is faker than most. The action was shot in just 26 days on a sound stage in London, the actors standing before a bluescreen and emoting in a visual vacuum. Everything else, apart from the props actors actually touch, was generated in a computer. The tiny, live elephant inside a glass dome, the airplane dashing along under the sea, the 90-foot robots stomping down Fifth Avenue, all were computer-drawn.
[Today's Christian, September-October, 2004]
Q. Several years ago a member of my family, Eloise, a single parent who had previously been heterosexual, began to live as a lesbian. How can we show love toward her, and yet not appear to condone this decision? She was raised as a Christian, is very familiar with biblical teachings, and must know this choice is not what the Lord would want. But even though we don't agree with Eloise's behavior, we still love her and want to spend time with her and our niece.
[Beliefnet, August 13, 2004]
My mother lives far from me. It’s about a thirteen-hour drive to get there. She is in pain frequently now, though she brushes it off; her thinking gets confused, though she is always cheerful, in the wry and whimsical way I remember from childhood. I hear her faint voice on the phone, but she usually says she can’t hear me. I rely on my sisters, who live closer, to manage most of her daily needs. Excellent doctors, pharmacists, and in-home caregivers help to make long-distance parental care possible, if not quite perfect.
Care of elderly parents has been a burden throughout human history.
[National Review Online, July 30, 2004]Judging from audience response, the tale told in “The Manchurian Candidate” still packs a wallop. Twists in the plot were met by gasps, and a retaliatory punch in the nose with applause. It seems to have everything a summer thriller needs.
I have to say “seems to have” because I'm a fan of the original version, released in 1962.
[Christianity Today Online, July 26, 2004]
On July 16, delegates to a special convention of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America met in Pittsburgh to adopt a constitution that will usher in a new era of self-rule. Those who find the workings of the Orthodox Church already Byzantine will be further confused by this action. Is it an act of rebellion, as if the Catholic Church in Ireland broke away from Rome?
No. It's actually a movement toward unity.
[National Review Online, July 23, 2004]That loveable rascal! Americans have a soft spot for men who live with gusto, especially the ones whose gusto is applied to coaxing favors from the ladies. In “The Door in the Floor” Ted Cole (excellently portrayed by Jeff Bridges) is one of these familiar figures: fifty-plus but trim, bed-rumpled hair, slouching around in a flowing dressing gown, ice cubes clinking in a glass, and rasping out the kind of profundities we expect from a writer and artist (not from a real writer and artist, from the kind they have in movies).