John Doane was born in England in about 1590. He married Ann and they had five children. He died in Eastham, Massachusetts 21 February 1684/5. Descendants and relatives lived mainly in Massachusetts, North Carolina, Florida and California.
Through my partnership with Yale University at the Jonathan Edwards Center, I have a goal to transcribe unpublished sermons that particularly deal with Edwards' Christology. These sermons, in addition to being available at the Jonathan Edwards Center, are also at my website. (www.osheadavis.com) However, I wanted to put together a sampling of these sermons in a printed form, and then expound on the Christ-o-centric preaching of Edwards: not a historical, but a theological focus. Edwards was a Christian, who above all, exuberated a love for the Christ. The sermons in this book will help show a man who saw the Excellency of Christ, and as a master painter, he exhibits to his audience a Masterpiece of his glorious God. Lastly, I have written two sermons. They are an endeavor to write modern day equivalents patterned after Jonathan Edwards. My hope is to enthuse the Christ-centered and Christ-supremacy preaching of Jonathan Edwards into the preaching of my peers.
Today's moviegoers and critics generally consider some Hollywood products--even some blockbusters--to be legitimate works of art. But during the first half century of motion pictures very few Americans would have thought to call an American movie "art." Up through the 1950s, American movies were regarded as a form of popular, even lower-class, entertainment. By the 1960s and 1970s, however, viewers were regularly judging Hollywood films by artistic criteria previously applied only to high art forms. In Hollywood Highbrow, Shyon Baumann for the first time tells how social and cultural forces radically changed the public's perceptions of American movies just as those forces were radically changing the movies themselves. The development in the United States of an appreciation of film as an art was, Baumann shows, the product of large changes in Hollywood and American society as a whole. With the postwar rise of television, American movie audiences shrank dramatically and Hollywood responded by appealing to richer and more educated viewers. Around the same time, European ideas about the director as artist, an easing of censorship, and the development of art-house cinemas, film festivals, and the academic field of film studies encouraged the idea that some American movies--and not just European ones--deserved to be considered art.
The ultimate end in a decree, [is] the shining forth of God's glory and the communication of his goodness must indeed be considered as prior, in the consideration of the Supreme Disposer, to everything. Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is widely held as perhaps the greatest American preacher and writer. In his sermons he had the amazing ability to combine the best of both worlds rich, deep theology and intense, practical implications. In his writings he shines as one who leads people to climb summits of thought and worship where few have gone. His God-centered direction in teaching is much needed today. His God-centered view of the Glory of God and Jesus Christ is more relevant than most understand.
