Marginal Christianity

by S.D. Kelly February 5, 2015   I t is a truth universally acknowledged that winter in New England, where I live, can be cold and long and dark. This is why, for the last four Januaries, I have looked forward to the return of  Downton Abbey with the same level of anticipation that I imagine my ancestors brought to the lighting of an oil lamp on winter evenings: a bright spot of warmth and light to ward off the cold, dark night. The misery outside my window is mitigated by the televised images of attractive people in custom-made Edwardian clothes milling about a beautiful—and massive—English country house in Yorkshire. From inside my climate-controlled 21st century house, I peer at the relics of a way of life, now a century past, that have retreated from memory into fantasy.   I’m not alone in my love of costume dramas, generally, and in my fascination with  Downton Abbey,  specifically. The show has b...

http://www.religionnews.com/2013/02/14/is-god-the-missing-character-in-downton-abbey/ David Gibson | Feb 14, 2013 | Leave a Comment   21   23 reddit 0     0 (RNS) The third season of the megahit PBS series “Downton Abbey” wraps up on Sunday (Feb. 17), capping another must-see run of ruin and redemption at Lord Grantham’s stately English manor. Yet some are still left puzzled over the absence of what should be a leading Upstairs player in this colorful cast: God. Writing last month in the flagship evangelical magazine Christianity Today, Todd Dorman wondered why — despite the heart-rending melodrama and all the “divine trappings” that gild the 1920s scenery — “God is a peripheral presence at best.” “There are numerous fascinating blog posts … that search for implicit Catholic and Ch...

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/christandpopculture/2013/01/gracious-servanthood-in-downton-abbey/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook   January 15, 2013 By Geoffrey Reiter Leave a Comment One of the latest fads to cross the pond from England to America is Downton Abbey , the brainchild of Gosford Park creator Sir Julian Fellowes.  The show, whose third season premiered for American audiences this month, follows the affairs of the British aristocratic Crawley family, while also keeping up with the lives of their various paid servants “downstairs.”  The first season began with the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, but the show has already reached 1920 by now, meaning that it spans a transitional time in English history, not only encapsulating the epochal events of World War I, but also political and social upheavals in the roles of women, Irish citizens, and, perhaps most relevantly for the series, paid servants.  The question has already...