Author David Dark to deliver public lecture at West Nashville UMC, Saturday, November 10, 2007, 7:00 p.m.
David Dark, author of Everyday Apocalypse: The Sacred Revealed in Radiohead, The Simpsons, and Other Pop Culture Icons and The Gospel According To America will deliver a public lecture on Saturday, November 10 at 7:00 p.m . at West Nashville United Methodist Church, 4701 Charlotte Avenue. The event is sponsored by the church, free of charge and is open to the public.
Dark's latest book, The Gospel According to America, was included in Publishers' Weekly's top religious books of 2005. Dark presents humorous, engaging and thought provoking responses to one of today's most rhetorical questions, "What does it mean for us to claim to be one nation, under God and yet we are so polarized along political and religious lines?" Proposing a framework for more genuine conversation about what it means to be Christian in this age, where institutional corrosion mars the religious and secular hallmarks of our time. Dark is currently a student in the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt University and a resident of Nashville where for several years he taught High School English at Christ Presbyterian Academy. He is also authoring his third book to be released in February, 2008.
For more information on the event, please call 297-3216. Parking is available on 47 th and across the street from the church which is located at 47 th and Charlotte.
From Publishers Weekly:
Readers of Dark's book Everyday Apocalypse know that this high school English teacher is a passionate, articulate, absurdly well-read interpreter of popular culture. But even the forewarned may be astonished by this latest effort. Dark's skill at probing the spiritual resonances of American culture - in forms high and low, from Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville to Bob Dylan and David Lynch - is matched by his uncanny ability to select telling moments from America's common story. Whether it's Elvis taking a shotgun to his television sets, Dylan confessing a sense of common humanity with Lee Harvey Oswald or George Washington treating British prisoners of war with unprecedented civility, Dark excavates a series of witnesses who speak prophetically to what he sees as our media-saturated overconfidence in our own righteousness. Moreover, he offers a convincing and unsettling account of the gospel itself - the "Jewish Christian" story of forgiveness and human dignity that, Dark argues, has animated America's ideals even as it has continually critiqued America's practices. Dark's Southern heritage is evident in his literary allusions (the subtitle echoes Flannery O'Connor) and in his affection for egalitarian conversation. Nearly every page has something to make readers pause, laugh, think or pray; perhaps most amazing is Dark's skill at burying layers of meaning for the reader to discover. It's hard to imagine a better tonic for our age than this unblinkingly honest exercise in faithful patriotism. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Dark's latest book, The Gospel According to America, was included in Publishers' Weekly's top religious books of 2005. Dark presents humorous, engaging and thought provoking responses to one of today's most rhetorical questions, "What does it mean for us to claim to be one nation, under God and yet we are so polarized along political and religious lines?" Proposing a framework for more genuine conversation about what it means to be Christian in this age, where institutional corrosion mars the religious and secular hallmarks of our time. Dark is currently a student in the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt University and a resident of Nashville where for several years he taught High School English at Christ Presbyterian Academy. He is also authoring his third book to be released in February, 2008.
For more information on the event, please call 297-3216. Parking is available on 47 th and across the street from the church which is located at 47 th and Charlotte.
From Publishers Weekly:
Readers of Dark's book Everyday Apocalypse know that this high school English teacher is a passionate, articulate, absurdly well-read interpreter of popular culture. But even the forewarned may be astonished by this latest effort. Dark's skill at probing the spiritual resonances of American culture - in forms high and low, from Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville to Bob Dylan and David Lynch - is matched by his uncanny ability to select telling moments from America's common story. Whether it's Elvis taking a shotgun to his television sets, Dylan confessing a sense of common humanity with Lee Harvey Oswald or George Washington treating British prisoners of war with unprecedented civility, Dark excavates a series of witnesses who speak prophetically to what he sees as our media-saturated overconfidence in our own righteousness. Moreover, he offers a convincing and unsettling account of the gospel itself - the "Jewish Christian" story of forgiveness and human dignity that, Dark argues, has animated America's ideals even as it has continually critiqued America's practices. Dark's Southern heritage is evident in his literary allusions (the subtitle echoes Flannery O'Connor) and in his affection for egalitarian conversation. Nearly every page has something to make readers pause, laugh, think or pray; perhaps most amazing is Dark's skill at burying layers of meaning for the reader to discover. It's hard to imagine a better tonic for our age than this unblinkingly honest exercise in faithful patriotism. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
