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.
Thanks, Kirstin...Steve Turner was one of the poets that got me interested in poetry in high school--thanks to my English Teacher. Unfortunately most of his best poetry is out of print and very hard to find. I found an anthology but many of the poems I wanted weren't in it and I was a little disappointed.
That's interesting. I'll have to check out his poetry. I came across a selection of his poetry when I was looking for a good bio page. Have you read any of his children's books?
"Culture is the creative act of the artist, but it is also the creative act of the everyday person."
I agree with your modification and I do think it is a key point.
To bring it down to the seemingly mundane, my wife likes to say that there is a uniquely "Christianly" way to change a diaper. :-)
kirstin,
i should also say, i wonder if i'd like the poems as much even if i should find them now--it's been a long time, and since the anthology that i bought was disappointing...it made me wonder if i was remembering more a fondness for the english teacher than for the poetry. :) titles (or lines) that stick in my mind are "tonight we will fake love," "it looked good on paper," and a poem about a person who gives up on love and swears it off only to find that "even cupid has fallen foul of technological progress" and has "traded in his futile bow and arrow for a shiny metal machine gun" as he looks down at the "row of holes currently appearing across his chest." (from memory, so may be slightly paraphrased).
L.
Ah, changing diapers. That's another ordinary act I could riff on for a while.
That's an interesting observation, Laryn. Art, like the Word, lives and is in constant relationship with viewers/readers/listeners/etc. I have the same experience with my own poetry, so it only makes sense that we should have it with that of others--not of outgrowing, necessarily, but of being in a different place in my story.
Kirstin - I remember your question and I didn';t answer it fully at the time. Because the title of the conference was Faith And Popular Culture I had resricted my talk to what is commonly accepted as popular culture - pop music and movies, not classical music and opera. Of course, all our rituals and behavuiour can be classified as 'culture' in the most general sense but, as I saw it, this wasn't what the conference was to be about. On the 'egg boiling' issue you (or was it me?) raised - there might be a Christian approach to eating eggs (issues of battery hens, the virtues of free range, question of vegetarianism,, doubts about cholesterol etc) but once you get to the boiling stage I don't think there would be any difference between the approach of a believer and a non believer to the actual heating of the egg. (Would liberals like their eggs runny and hyper Calvinists prtefer them over done?) I think it was in his essay on religion and literature that C. S. Lewis specifically mentioned the boiling of eggs. S, I agree with you that even with the simplest things - drinking a cofee or taking a bath - there are specifically Christian questions that can be asked and which may affect our consumption of water and caffeine but once we're in the bath or in Stabucks I don't think we actually 'do bath' or 'do coffee' in a different way. I'm sorry that I might have sounded flippant when I answered the question at the conference.
Blessings in your project.
Steve
Thanks for your comments and clarification, Steve. The thoughts inspired by your talk, though not directly related to the subject of the conference (as you rightly point out), inspired the writing of this piece in our most recent issue of catapult. Your observations about the subject matter of the conference make me wonder why we couldn't have a more broadly focused faith and culture conference where discussions of faithfulness in the mundane acts of life could lead to more fully formed witness in the everyday lives of the attendees. Something to think about as we plot our next ^camping is not optional conference for *cino...
You are right that the act might not look any different to the outside observer (though we hope only a select few will ever observe us taking a bath :), but it seems like there should be a more wholistic way of understanding "the act" itself. The spirit of the act and the inner life of the "actor" are just as real as running the tap or sipping a mocha. Both Sylvia Keesmat (writer/professor associated with ICS) and our friend Grant have been very influential in my thinking more about the spirit of an action or a home or a piece of music or... And I imagine I'll learn more as I finally read Rookmaaker's Modern Art and the Death of a Culture.