Culture Clips: When Church and Football Clash
Going to church is more important than watching the Super Bowl, right? Not so fast. A new study by LifeWay Research (reported in Christianity Today) found that 41% of protestant pastors whose churches typically have Sunday night activities plan some sort of adjustment to that schedule to accommodate the big game. A small percentage of […]
Wanna Run Off to the Circus? Too Late.
Sometimes cultural change claims unexpected victims. Last week, it came for an icon birthed in a bygone era: the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. The production, known for generations by its tagline “The Greatest Show on Earth,” will perform for the last time in May. That will mark the end of a 146-year […]
Culture Clips: PG-13 Gun Violence Soars
If you’ve been to a PG-13 action movie lately, you might have thought, Man, it sure seems like there’s a lot of violence for a PG-13 flick. Turns out you were right. A new study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania has found that gun violence in PG-13 movies began […]
I See Dead People
We often plumb the depths of moral ambiguity in our media reviews here at Plugged In. But there’s a new ethical controversy brewing that, to my mind, defies an easy or obvious moral resolution. The conundrum, simply put, is this: In what context is it acceptable to use a computer-generated image of a deceased star […]
Culture Clips: The Family That Eats Together …
We all know that teens today face plenty of struggles—some of which I’m going to talk about shortly. But let’s start with some good news. Want your kids to say no to substance abuse? Having dinner regularly as a family is one simple, tasty way to build a relational bond that correlates with wiser choices. […]
Is Rogue One Still on Top?
One of the great ironies of the Star Wars franchise is that while its storyline often focuses on an outgunned, outmatched, overwhelmed band of rebels, in the real world these cinematic heroes much more closely resemble the all-powerful Empire. I imagine every time a new film in the saga is released, it’s got to feel […]
Learning to Read Again
I love books. But lately—with lately meaning, oh, the last decade or so—a truer statement might be this: I like the idea of books. I like the idea of those big, bound collections of ideas that might stimulate my thinking and change my life in profound ways. But the reality—a reality shaped and molded by […]
Musical Musings 2016: Adam Holz’s Year-End Picks
Each year, I review about a hundred or so albums and tracks. There have been some years where I’ve struggled to come up with enough really positive choices to compile this best-of list. But 2016 was not one of those years. Indeed, as I write this, I’ve got the opposite problem: making tough calls about […]
When Doctor Strange Went to Ephesus
Doctor Strange is casting its lucrative spell on the box office. It’s Marvel’s latest successful introduction of a character whom only really “inside baseball” comic book fans likely even knew existed. And in translating the mystical story of Dr. Stephen Strange to the big screen, director Scott Derrickson has managed to do something paradoxically compelling: […]
Culture Clips Is Moving to a New Home
Our weekly Culture Clips feature began as an email to youth leaders, pastors and cultural influencers back in 1999. Since then, Culture Clips has evolved and changed—the biggest of those changes being its migration to our website back in its early days—as we’ve sought to keep a finger on the pulse of what’s going on […]