First!

So after a couple of years of fruitlessly attempting to condense my thoughts to 1000 character Facebook statuses (or 147 characters on Twitter, that cheeky devil), I've decided that it would seem like a good idea to get a blog up and running. I realize that "brevity is the soul of wit," but there is something to be said about being able to fully articulate your thoughts.

With that being said, I'm Ryan Killeen, and I thought you might want to know a couple of things about me before we begin. First, I consider myself something of an amateur philosopher, theologian, musician, and satirist, so you can reasonably expect those four things to be driving my blog posts. So if none of those things really interest you, you know not to come here, but we all know that's not going to happen because as much as people find philosophy and theology boring, everyone loves music and a good bit of snarkiness now and then.

That's right, I did say theology. I consider myself to be an evangelical Christian, as much as that may surprise some of you based on the church-directed vitriol that sometimes pops up on my Facebook (the church is like that family member who never quite recovered from that head trauma they received in their youth - you love them, but you'd love them a lot more if they'd just stop chewing on the furniture for one second and say something coherent). I'm not really your typical evangelical Christian in the sense that I'm an egalitarian, I'm not much of a creationist, I'm extraordinarily contemptuous of "Christian pop culture" and I'd much rather read Friedrich Nietszche than Francis Chan. I consider myself an evangelical because I believe in substitutionary atonement, or the idea that Jesus Christ died on the cross to take the punishment for mankind's sins. To me that's enough to warrant the evangelical label and whatever baggage comes along with it (most of which is pretty negative, let's be honest).


Anyway, so that's where I'm coming from. Now for the blog's name: Evangelical Enlightenment. I gave the blog this name for three reasons. The first is that it's a placeholder until I can think of something better. The second is that it essentially sums up what the overarching vision for my life is. The Enlightenment represents many things, but the aspect of it I'm going for in particular is the incredible cultural boom that came along with it. It was that heady moment between the Renaissance and the bleak cynicism of the 20th century which gave birth to arguably the greatest thinkers, authours, musicians, artists, poets, etc in Western history, if not perhaps the the world. It was also that moment where Christendom kind of hid under a blanket and, with the exception of a few notable figures, huddled together hoping that it would all go away.

And here's where this blog comes in: My dream is to one day see the church experience the Enlightenment it never had, to come to a point (even if it's just a phase) where boundaries are pushed, where new levels of greatness are reached, where accolades are heaped upon those revolutionaries who deserve it instead of whoever can scream the loudest or look the most spiritual while playing the synthesizer. A church where knowledge for knowledge's sake is valued (more on this another time), where truth and beauty are given equal or greater standing to "whatever works." A pipe dream, you might say, but it beats dreaming about one day owning a bigger television.

The third reason is that they both start with the same letter.

Anyway, my laundry's nearly finished, so I supposed I'd better rein this in. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy being a part of this blog and sharing in my thoughts, dreams, and having arguments in my comments section.

Blogfully yours,
Ryan Killeen

PS: Yes, I know that a lot of what I said about the Enlightenment actually pertains to Romanticism but that doesn't start with the same letter as Evangelical, darn it. I thought about maybe Romantic Reason but that might send the wrong message.