This past weekend, Rob and I attended a conference at Messiah College titled "Faith & Popular Culture: Reconciling with the Popular Arts." I'm going to post notes from the sessions I attended, followed by some more general comments.
The keynote address on Friday night was given by Steve Turner: poet, rock journalist and biographer. Here are some points from his very good talk:
- We live "culture". We cannot avoid it. The question is not whether we should be involved, but how to be involved as Christians.
- There is a tendency among Christians to denigrate culture and attempt to "separate." Perceptions of culture include that it's worldly, represents idleness, distracts from God, leads to a "slippery slope," represents a source of sin.
- Christians know a lot about redemption, but very little about creation.
- The highest form of life is perceived to be separation from the world through "worship." "The things of earth will grow strangely dim" for Christians who are focused on Jesus.
- J.I. Packer notes that, historically, we are human before we are Christian. We are Christian because of sin and Jesus restores us to full humanity.
- God is a creator who creates us as creators. Therefore, even in avoiding culture, we create culture.
- Christians do harm when they block out culture with messages they don't agree with, because culture is useful for conversation. Philippians 4:8 is used to set artificial limits in denial of the inevitable mix of good and bad, but we can see and make judgments without "thinking on" something.
- We do need to say "no" sometimes to things that are not beneficial. However, too much resistance, as in exercise, leads to a tear in the muscle. But we do need to be aware that we're always confronting an argument (contrary to the "it's just entertainment" argument).
- T.S. Eliot said that the literature we read with the least effort can have the greatest influence (referred to "harmless" television shows like Friends).
- So how do we engage culture?
- Take it seriously by understanding the meanings of culture around us.
- Immerse ourselves in the Bible to develop a thoroughly Christian worldview.
- Visibly confront culture through interviews, reviews, attending lectures, etc. Hold creative people to account and get them to justify their reasoning.
- Create culture, but love the medium. Don't just "use" culture as a tool for evangelism.
- We share a common humanity with all people and we can celebrate that fact in the creation of culture. Our experiences are shared, but the perspective may be different (gratitude to God, for example). God's world is one (uses the example of Sufjan Stevens, who can make back-to-back songs about fishing, his girlfriend, the transfiguration, etc. flow seamlessly). We should not be afraid of either similarities to or differences from non-Christians.
Turner started with what I thought was a good definition of culture, but seemed to slowly drift toward culture=the arts. Culture is the creative act of the artist, but it is also the creative act of the everyday person, creating their narrative as they construct a life that reflects their deepest values. He used the example of a poem about taking a bath to illustrate the last point about a common humanity, seeming to indicate that the poem was the "culture" in the example. I would argue however that the taking of the bath also fits the definition of culture. He challenged people to get involved, but said that "maybe some of you will" be involved in the cultural transformation of your generation. My impression is that all of us, if we indeed "live" culture even in trying to avoid it, will be involved in that transformation, for better or worse.
When the question and answer time came, I questioned him on whether his definition was not expansive enough. I don't like challenging speakers in front of an audience, but I felt like his limited definition was key misinformation, with very real implications for how we make decision in everyday life. He seemed to mock the idea of taking a Christian bath or boiling an egg Christianly or fixing the plumbing Christianly. however, while we can state the engagement of such mundane things in a silly way, I think it's dangerous to dismiss their weight in the context of a life of faith. I can think of hundreds of questions the discerning Christian might ask as she takes a bath, boils and egg for breakfast and then heads out for the day on plumbing house calls. We run into a dangerous sacred/secular distinction when we declare some things, by our definitions, outside of consideration in a life of faith.
My modifications to the definition shouldn't detract, however, from the very true and excellent points that Turner made. His points were just more broadly applicable--in a good way--than he intended.
