Karen Swallow Prior’s very interesting forthcoming book
The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, & Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis
has set me thinking about a question that’s not at all limited to “evangelicals” (whoever those strange and incessantly talked-about creatures really are). Here’s the scenario: You read a book or an article or a bunch of articles or watch a movie or a documentary or whatever about a subject you know firsthand—a region, perhaps, such as the Midwest, or a particular religious tradition, or a political tendency. And you recognize elements that are very familiar to you, but the “big picture” that’s presented doesn’t accord with your own experience (and the dissonance is often pronounced).