“Everything Is Alright”? Self-Loathing and Salvation through Commit This to Memory

Seventeen years later, Commit This to Memory remains a visceral account of one man’s search for that reality, an empty bottle ebenezer reminding us that self-actualization is a messy, painful, and ultimately impossible process. Without help, that is.

1981 vs. 2021: Searching for Salvation

Reviewing the products of 1981 and 2021 reveals our desperate search for salvation from death… and salvation from modern daily life.

CAPC’s Most-Read Articles of 2021

Here’s what everyone was reading at Christ and Pop Culture in 2021.

No, You Can’t Get It All Done: Time Management for Mortals and Mineo’s Never Land II

You have to choose a few things, sacrifice everything else, and deal with the inevitable sense of loss that results.

Lyrics of Lament: Suffering and Theodicy in Hip-Hop

When Tamir Rice and Trayvon Martin were killed, when children die around the world of preventable disease, when children and teens experience the “death” of family and get bounced around foster homes, evil is manifest. Suffering has a face. Suddenly questioning God’s plan seems the most reasonable course of action.

Lorde’s Solar Power Is an Embodiment of the Spiritual-but-Not-Religious Age

Even as Solar Power knocks at the hollow of everything that we seem to live for, these are questions that, even at the end, remain unanswered.

Could J. Cole’s The Off-Season Just Be an “Okay” Album?

The Off-Season might just be an “okay” album for some J. Cole fans’ standards; but if we take into account its purpose as a work of art, it wouldn’t be an overstatement to categorize it as great.

Summer of Soul and the Reclamation of Modern Black History

Most of us have some knowledge of the Woodstock festival. But why don’t we know about the Harlem Cultural Festival, which was held at the same time?

The Disco Craze Started with a Lie and Ended with an Explosion

So now you had a nationwide craze over a genre of music that barely existed (having just broken off from Motown and R&B), based on a piece of long-form journalism that was entirely fictional and a movie made by people with no real connections to the original disco scene.

Following The Killers Down Glory Road

Leave it to a band from the city of bright lights and long odds to show us how to live out our points along history’s timeline.

Black History Month Roundup, 2021

These contributions are birthed from joy and lament, celebration and sadness, commemoration of the past and considerations of what can be in the future.

“Why Is Grace Now Civil Disobedience?” The Prophetic Politics of Five Iron Frenzy’s Until This Shakes Apart

Until This Shakes Apart collects Five Iron Frenzy’s most dynamic, urgent set of songs to date.

A Tale of Two Gigs (and Two Gospels)

Those who eschew a revisionist view of Scripture around the issue of sex will be viewed as the “do-badders” and no longer the “do-gooders.”

Music & Podcast Favorites of 2020 from CAPC Staff

Our team highlights their favorite music and podcasts from 2020 that managed to break through the dark days and deliver a bit of goodness.

Beethoven Broke My Arm: A Pandemic Tale

Perhaps it was inevitable that, back when I was looking forward to a summer of attending and reviewing performances of all nine symphonies, it was all about to crash and burn.

The Strokes in 2020: Excluding Impatience and Embracing The New Abnormal

Goodness takes time, so why not live with hopeful ambiguity instead of bitter snap judgement?