For musician and first-time director, Justin Dillon, what began as a way to personally process his shocking realization of the scope of modern-day slavery quickly turned into a sort of open-mic concert venue for other musicians to join him in responding and bringing awareness to this horrific issue. This led Dillon into a documentary study on music, which finally became the first feature rockumentary film, Call + Response: Exposing the world's 27 million most terrifying secrets.

There are more slaves today than ever before in human history.  There are 1 million people trafficked in the United States every year.  Trafficking humans is the third most profitable business in the world.

Anytime someone tells me that “the next U2” is here, I know that I no longer need to pay attention to what they are about to say. There will not be, nor should there be, another U2. But when I heard Steve Stockman, author of Walk On—arguably the definitive book on U2—tell a group at Calvin College that Bono and The Edge can soon step aside because a new band that is rising in the UK is here, I felt I had to pay attention.

Mumford and Sons, with their debut album Sigh No More, are a far cry from being the biggest band on the planet, but they certainly are positioned as one of the best new ones. Paste describes their music as “A delicate fusion of vintage Americana and English folk.” If you have not heard it already from Fleet Foxes, welcome to the sound of neo-acoustica. In a time where banjo is the new black in indie music, Mumford and Sons sounds familiar but strikingly more significant.

When it comes to "stickin' it to the man" I tend to envision a Rage Against the Machine concert: a lot of anger, a lot of yelling, and if you saw Rage's show at Lollapalooza a couple years back (which I did), a lot of people throwing water bottles filled with urine. In the end the anger is what I tend to be left with when examining those in our world who take advantage of others for their own gain. But the reason I think I like this film is that it gave me a very different vision of how to deal with those feelings of injustice.

When sifting through this year's favorite albums, it did not take us long to deem David Bazan's Curse Your Branches "Album of the Year."  As we have already mentioned, recognizing particular artists/albums over others often says more about the listeners than it does the artist themselves.  We acknowledge this.

So, what does it say about us?

While rednoW is not solely dedicated to the fusion of art and theology, it certainly grabs our attention when it shows up.  And with Bazan's most autobiographical album to date, it has certainly shown up.  But it's not Bazan's particular theology that draws us in.  Rather, it is his ability to rest in the tension of reality - even if this means questioning his (our) perception of God.