The Wagonmaster

(Porter Wagoner singing with Dolly Parton. Porter is remembered for having launched Dolly Parton's career. It was just one of many accomplishments in the life of this member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.)


I was saddened to learn of the death of country music singer, Porter Wagoner. I have many good memories of watching his show on Saturday afternoons when I was growing up. In the following years, I did not keep up as closely with country music and lost track of lots of those singers who were the stars of the 1970s, but in time, I revived an interest in those same singers. Thankfully, a number of them were still singing after 2000. Porter Wagoner himself said he did not have a pretty voice. Country music hinges on meaning and heart rather than vocal tone qualities. In my joking with my wife, who does have a beautiful voice, I contrast round-mouth singing (the kind she does in the chorale) with singing from the heart as done my many country singers. There is a place for both. Country music is home to songs from the heart, from the time of the Carter Family and Hank Williams to the present.

America has at times strayed from its Christian foundations and its belief in God. But in the depths of country music, there has always abided an unchanging faith in God, the Bible, Christianity, and the old truths, symbolized by country churches, family, and community. Country songs often returned to the themes of the old homeplace, the girl back home, neighbors, mother and daddy, celebrations with the family, and the love found between a husband and a wife and parents and children. There have always been those cynics who despise America and its mission in this world, but country music has an unswerving sense of patriotism. Yes, country songs have often and often to an extreme degree emphasized drinking (more correctly, drinkin') and marital unfaithfulness (termed, cheatin'). As Gene Edward Veith noted in a remarkable book some years back, country music has portrayed the balance that is really found in man's heart--a yearning for God along with an often uncontrollable propensity to sin. At its best, country songs, including many of Porter's best, emphasized the sin of man, but in such a way as to recognize its miserable consequences (e.g., "Cold Hard Facts of Life" and "Carroll County Accident"). It was another Southerner, a writer, not a singer, William Faulkner, who emphasized that literature centered on the 'old veritites,' that is, the old unchanging truths.

I was thankful to read in the news reports of Porter Wagoner's gospel songs, the prayers of his friends, and the evidences of faith in his life. He was a fun-loving man, who enjoyed laughing, fishing, and singing. Like so many country stars, he really loved entertaining. I never got to see him live and regret that missed opportunity. It's sad to live in a world without Porter Wagoner, Bill Monroe, Johnny Cash, Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, and Patsy Cline, but at least we had 'em for a while and at least we can still enjoy the music.

Humanities--Readings on the Ancient, Classical, & Biblical Worlds

The best way to begin studying the world of the Greeks is by reading Miss Hamilton's comprehensive and enjoyable account of the whole world of mythology.


Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days provides a short summary of the key mythological figures. His works is a type of Cliff's Notes to Hamilton's Mythology (although written many centuries earlier). The world of mythology was entertaining and perverse, insightful and blind, fulfilling and empty, rich in literary content and impoverished in spiritual truths, man at his self-sufficient best and man in his apostate rebellious worst.


Markos' From Achilles to Christ is yet another great resource on studying the pagans from a Christian perspective. Along with Peter Leithart's Heroes in the City of Man, this book is a great reference work for understanding the Greek and Roman classics. Both Leithart and Dr. Louise Cowan have endorsed this book.

And speaking of Dr. Cowan, her essay "Epic Cosmopoesis" is an outstanding and brilliant study on the nature of epic literature. It is not easy reading, but it pays dividends for the careful and discerning student.

Read It; Liked It

Mark Noll is a very gifted church historian. This book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, came out about ten years ago. I read it due to my ongoing interest in matters pertaining to 20th Century Christian Worldview thinkers (presented in lecture form at the Christian Student Worldview Conference--see link to the left). There is much that I agreed with in this book. It is convicting to realize that there are no significant upper-level evangelical research universities. We have Christian colleges and smaller universities, but the academic world is somewhat closed to evangelicals. I am still questioning Noll's opposition to 6 day creation. He links the Creationinst position with Dispensational Premillennialism. No doubt, many like Henry Morris in the 6-day Creation camp were Premils, but Noll never addressed the involvement of Post- and A-millennial Calvinists with Creationism.

But a few questions and even some disagreements cannot offset so much in this fine book that is fodder for thought among us who are believed to not do much thinking.







Visiting Yorktown Battlefield last July prompted me to buy and read this thorough account of this climatic battle in our War for Independence. The author, Jerome Greene, is a National Park historian and he writes as such; meaning, he notes every embattlement, every trench, every fortification of the Americans, the French, and the British. This slows the reading a bit, but the audacity of General Washington, the commitment of the American and French troops, and the Providentially ordered turning of events at Yorktown makes this a thrilling book to read.