Christianity Today

Penny Biddy
Abilene, Texas

After being in church music for 40 years, I think both sides in the worship wars need to change. Contemporary music tends to be theologically and technically simplistic, loud, and egocentric. Roughly the same could be said of traditional music: boring, relying on a repertoire of 20 hymns, "we"-centered, and increasingly shallow in theology. For both, the temptation is to entertain rather than to point people to the triune God.

Unfortunately, musicians are trying to get the attention of an audience that is spiritually asleep—which leads me to conclude that a spiritual awakening is needed before anything meaningful can come out of the music program. Pastors, take it from here.

Ron White
Bloomington, Minnesota

New Views on Worldview

As the lone survivor of the four worldview advocates that James K. A. Smith apparently names in his book Desiring the Kingdom [CT Review, August], I question some of his charges. According to Eric Miller's review, we worldview proponents see humans as "primarily rational creatures, moved and animated mainly by ideas." On the contrary, I have maintained for over half a century that all our thinking is "perspectival," that worldview beliefs are rooted in pre-theoretical attitudes.

In writing on Christian higher education, therefore, I have described persons as "reflective" rather than "rational" (to avoid Enlightenment connotations), as well as relational beings (to God and other persons) and valuing beings.

Arthur F. Holmes
Wheaton, Illinois

The title of Miller's review seems sensationalized. Fortunately, Jamie Smith is more balanced than it suggests regarding worldview. That "there is something more important than our intellectual framework" is a no-brainer. Few among the most ardent worldview rationalists would disagree. There are nuanced articulations of worldview that address the rationalist charge, as I did in Worldview: The History of a Concept. There, I claim that the heart of the matter is that worldview is a matter of the heart. So let's not throw out the worldview baby with the rationalist bathwater.

David K. Naugle
Chair of Philosophy, Dallas Baptist University Dallas, Texas

Correction:August's "School's Out Forever" [HeadLines, p. 13] incorrectly stated the number of member schools in the Association of Christian Schools International. The correct number is 5,500 schools.

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