Our modern culture is marked by a rejection of truth. From charismatic professors who scoff at a biblical worldview to entertainment media that treat the idea of traditional morality as a joke, it seems the only “truth” commonly held is that there is none.
That’s where “Salvo” comes in. It’s a new magazine designed to call upon reason and research to explore the idea of timeless truths. The eye-popping, mind-grabbing graphics are your first clue that Salvo is no boring, academic or highbrow philosophical pub filled with mumbo-jumbo. Flip through the first issue, and you’ll see immediately that you’re light years away from the staid polemics you might tend to expect from supporters of “traditional morality.”
Right on the masthead we’re told that Salvo, published by the Chicago-based Fellowship of St. James, is “dedicated to debunking the cultural myths that have undercut human dignity, all but destroyed the notions of virtue and morality, and slowly eroded our appetite for transcendence.” A tall order, indeed -- but it didn’t take me long to figure out that this new magazine is up to the task.
Salvo’s topics include cloning, euthanasia, evolution and eugenics. It’s like a thoughtful version of “Wired” magazine, making it perfect for kids raised on the attention-grabbing graphics of today’s Internet. According to editor Bobby Maddex, that’s no accident. “The people who understand our mission the most are parents,” he says. They are e-mailing the editors about the changes they’ve observed in young-adult children who now question traditional morality. So “they buy subscriptions for those children or leave the magazine lying around,” Maddex says.
Those who peruse the premier issue -- you must give this glossy publication a chance and order at least one copy -- will find articles such as “A Grave New World: When Science Trumps Religion, Our Personhood is the Casualty,” “Double Features: Hollywood’s Inconsistent Take on Cloning” and “Breed Between the Lines: Rewriting the ‘Book of Life.’” Throughout, the editors define the terms under discussion (which will help those unfamiliar with, say, the difference between “Darwinism” and “Neo-Darwinism”).
It’s also nice to see, in a publication dedicated to some seriously weighty topics, such a brilliant use of witty humor to point out the absurdities in modern “morality.” For example, in one of several fake ads sprinkled throughout Salvo, we learn about the plusses and minuses of the latest in “suicide technology,” such as the “CoGenie.” (“Plus: The two carbon-monoxide generating chemicals pack a wallop, and the nasal prong fits comfortably without undue pinching. Minus: The tube connecting chemicals to nose can be unwieldy, especially during those annoying death spasms.”)
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