In Depth:  Angeline Liles

Crossing the Culture

Good contemporary Christian music can be a bit like buses.

You wait ages for one and then two come along at once. This was the case in February 2018 which saw the release of new albums of original material by American singer-songwriters Audrey Assad and Sandra McCracken. Coming from separate seasons of struggle, doubt and sorrow, Assad’s Evergreen and McCracken’s Songs from the Valley both carry patterns from the Psalms into different styles of contemporary music, both concluding, in their own ways, to ‘not let the darkness have the final cadence’.

Crossing the Culture

This festive period saw two much-anticipated deliveries to our TV screens.

Shown over three consecutive evenings, a new adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic Little Women has been met with rapturous reviews, no small feat considering that the 1868 novel had become synonymous with its 1994 cinematic adaptation. Running as far as possible in the opposite direction from the nostalgic, wholesome world of Little Women, the fourth season of Netflix-owned Black Mirror landed as a fully-formed, six-episode package of dystopian discomfort not long after Christmas Day. During a season where home, hearth and family are celebrated, it is timely that these entertainment offerings explore these two themes in striking contrast.

Crossing the Culture

Blue Planet II seems to have captured the public’s imagination. I caught up with episode two – ‘The Deep’.

Sixteen years after the Bafta – and Emmy – winning series first aired on the BBC, David Attenborough is back to plumb the depths of the earth’s seas in ways only recently made possible by developments in technology.

Crossing the Culture

A new era has dawned for that most British of institutions, The Great British Bake Off.

When it was announced in early 2017 that Channel 4 had bought the rights to a show which had almost become synonymous with the BBC, its host channel for seven series, nothing short of uproar poured out from its loyal and protective audience. Then came the news that the endearing and impeccably dressed baking royalty Mary Berry, along with long-time presenters Mel and Sue, would not be joining judge Paul Hollywood in the channel move, which is just about the equivalent to using sultanas instead of chocolate chips in any baked goods (no one is happy about that kind of surprise).

Crossing the Culture

At the end of July, Arcade Fire released their fifth studio album.

On release, it entered both the UK and US album charts straight at number one. Well regarded as a band who trade in cutting-edge lyrical comment on contemporary culture while simultaneously participating in it, their arena shows sell out within minutes.

Crossing the Culture

The TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1984 novel The Handmaid’s Tale received a lauded debut in the US several months ago.

It has finally hit our screens, courtesy of Channel 4. The hype and early reviews revealed a common thread as many reviewers compared the dystopian world of the adaptation to the current political and social climate of the US. It only takes a brief scan through the Twitter hashtag to see that the regular viewing public find an uncomfortable level of resonance between the show and Donald Trump and Mike Pence’s attitudes towards women.

Crossing the Culture

Over the past few years a noticeable trend has emerged with Disney releasing ‘live action’ versions of many of their classic films.

Cinderella and The Jungle Book have already had the treatment, and there are rumours that Mulan and The Lion King are well into the production process. Opinions differ as to whether rehashing the classics is just laziness and a desire for guaranteed success, but there’s no doubt that anticipating the release of these films appeals to our nostalgia. Beauty and the Beast was released mid-March and smashed box office records, re-establishing itself as one of Disney’s most beloved tales.

Crossing the Culture

A variety of books on ‘How to Hygge’ are available in many bookshops.

Waterstones Online declares that ‘if you’ve not found your hygge yet, we have plenty of lovely books to tell you how.’ The OED defines hygge as: ‘A quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being (regarded as a defining characteristic of Danish culture).’ Photos tagged ‘hygge’ (that’s pronounced ‘hoo-gah’) on Instagram often involve candles, porcelain mugs holding hot chocolate or tea, an abundance of blankets, books and soft lighting. Everything that makes you glad to not be outside in the frozen darkness of 4pm during British Winter Time.

Crossing the Culture

It shook thousands of people out of their homes and onto the streets in protest.

The executive order, signed by the newly inaugurated President Trump on 27 January, immediately suspended the settlement of Syrian refugees for an undefined period of time. It also stopped the resettlement of all other refugees for four months.

Crossing the Culture

‘God still sees us even though we worship in secret.’

In rural 17th-century Japan, a native Christian convert assures two newly arrived Jesuit priests on a mission from Portugal that his faith, and the faith of his fellow villagers packed into the dimly lit hut, is fervent and resilient, even in their impoverished and persecuted state.

Crossing the Culture

‘I come to pour out my marrow, un-skimping, I want to be holy.’

Psalmody (2016, Eyewear Publishing) is poet Maria Apichella’s ambitious, lyrical and technically brilliant debut collection.

Crossing the Culture

Tales of copper mining, smuggling and romantic chaos in 18th-century Cornwall, courtesy of the BBC, have once again come to an end.

Oh, how we’ll miss (until mid-2017 sometime) those rugged Cornish coastlines! As we question what will now fill the Sunday night void, we might be left wondering what to do with our conflicted affection for a very flawed and faulty protagonist, who only in the closing minutes recovers from a betrayal that nearly costs him his marriage.

Crossing the Culture

Every day reminded me that all of creation is groaning for redemption.

Waking up each morning over the summer to news reports: terrorist attacks on trains and explosions in major cities; American police officers using their guns as a first resort against unarmed African-Americans and the ensuing protests; an attempted military coup in Turkey; devastating floods; train collisions; and the ever-looming spectre of a new American President.

Crossing the Culture

‘Many things begin with seeing, in this world of ours.’

Lilias Trotter, little known artist-turned-missionary of the 19th century, has her long-forgotten story told in director Laura Waters Hinson’s latest film. Through interviews with Trotter experts from North America and the UK and character narrative supplied by Michelle Dockery (Downton Abbey) and John Rhys-Davies (Lord of the Rings), Many Beautiful Things unfolds the events and relationships of Trotter’s life, which took her from painting protégé to North African missionary.

Crossing the Culture

This month’s column is a bit different.

It’s an interview with Matt Searles, pastor and Director of Training for the South Central Gospel Partnership, based in Oxford, about his new album of Psalms set to original music.

Crossing the Culture

Lady Susan Vernon’s reputation precedes her, and not in a good way.

Brought to life on the big screen by director Whit Stillman, with Kate Beckinsale in the leading role, Jane Austen’s posthumously published Lady Susan has finally been given the Hollywood adaptation treatment. Adopting the title of an entirely separate piece of Austen’s juvenilia, Love & Friendship attempts to find a home amongst the established Austen adaptation canon by mirroring titles like Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility.

Crossing the Culture

In 1977 Annie Dillard wrote a book on art entitled Holy the Firm.

In it she wrote that artists of all kinds are to be ‘in flawed imitation of Christ on the cross stretched both ways unbroken and thorned. So must the work be also, […] spanning the gap from here to eternity, home’.

Crossing the Culture

Purchasing & purging our way to lasting joy, peace and security?

For decades we’ve been told that in order to be happy, we need to own certain stuff.

Crossing the Culture

‘People need the church more than ever right now’.

That’s what a lawyer tells a journalist from the Boston Globe in 2001, as the newspaper’s four-person investigative team, Spotlight, is in the mire of pursuing a story which would later win them a Pulitzer Prize.

Crossing the Culture

In the Heart of the Sea is a turbulent retelling of the real life events behind Herman Melville’s classic novel, Moby Dick.

It’s a film about storytelling, as the adventure unfolds through the narrative of Thomas Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson), who recounts his experience as a 14-year-old cabin boy on board the Nantucket whaleship Essex. Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) arrives at Nickerson’s home at the invitation of his wife, who pleads with her husband to unburden himself of the tragic events of that voyage. Reluctant at first, Nickerson is persuaded by his wife that to share his story, to confess to Melville what he witnessed and endured, will liberate him from the weighty chains of guilt that he has silently carried all his life. Melville, keen to prove himself as a serious author, has pen and notebook at the ready as Nickerson begins: ‘The tragedy of the Essex is the story of men. And a Demon.’

Crossing the Culture

Home is where the heart is.

But what else defines ‘home’? Do we recognise it by bricks and mortar, or by the relationships the idea of it embodies? The concept of ‘home’ is subtly in perpetual flux throughout The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, whose final filmic adaptation was recently released.

Crossing the Culture

Have you noticed how ‘authenticity’ has become something of a buzzword lately?

Having become unlaced from its close old companion ‘integrity’, its meaning has taken on a new set of connotations. As Douglas Wilson says in his short book Wordsmithy, ‘the word authentic has lost its authenticity and has become a nebulous term of praise’.

Crossing the Culture

‘Everest – is the most dangerous place on earth.’

The events of May 1996 have been told and retold through biography, photography and documentary. September 2015 saw the release of Baltasar Kormákur’s directorial retelling of a team of climbers in their attempt to conquer the highest peak in the world. Amongst its cast are Josh Brolin, Keira Knightley and Robin Wright, but it is Everest itself that maintains centre stage. Visually impressive and engrossing, the film clearly displays human approaches to creation, beauty and achievement.

Crossing the Culture

‘The night was dark, no father was there / the child was wet with dew / the mire was deep, and the child did weep / and away the vapour flew.’

These lines of William Blake in ‘The Little Boy Lost’ from Songs of Innocence tell of a significant moment of maturing which is common to human experience.

Crossing the Culture

‘Jesus wept’ is best known for being the shortest and perhaps most misused verse in the Bible.

But these two words are more famous for their brevity than for the meaning they convey.

Crossing the Culture

Florence Welch has been causing a stir with her own distinctive brand of alternative-pop-rock-soul.

She entered the music scene in 2009 with the release of her debut album Lungs and 2011’s Ceremonials established her as one of Britain’s foremost female music exports, so heavy expectation awaited the release of her latest offering, How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful back in May. Following in the tradition set by her previous two albums, this album is thick with religious imagery and metaphor.

Crossing the Culture

We live in a smartphone age.

Whatever we feel about being able to receive and respond to emails, make videos and update Facebook through our mobile phones, we have to address the reality that these shiny new tools are changing the way we live, work and interact.

Crossing the Culture

‘No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.’

With this opening line to A Grief Observed, his journal of grieving over the death of his wife, C.S. Lewis hints at the abyss of bewilderment and panic that comes with loss. One of the few certainties of human life is that we will all at some time, to varying degrees, encounter it. We give the name ‘grief’ to that seemingly insurmountable collection of feelings in an attempt to reclaim control; to provide an explanation for the unwelcome wildness that reigns in body, heart and mind during the early days of bereavement.

Crossing the Culture

Occasionally, a song becomes so widely played that it is almost inescapable.

You find yourself humming a tune you weren’t aware you knew, because it is being so regularly piped through shop sound systems, in pubs, and over the radio. We sing along mindlessly.

Crossing the Culture

Marilynne Robinson’s newly-published Lila compels us to look afresh at the commonplace.

‘The world is charged with the grandeur of God’, Gerard Manley Hopkins once wrote. In those rare, clear moments when our eyes are unveiled, we might sometimes have a sense of this grandeur. We know it best when we behold a mountainscape or sunset, a new-born baby or a perfectly formed rose. The psalms are brimfull of wonder at the beauty of creation, and return to God praises for making it so.