How to Change Culture

2011 February 15

by Tyler

I’ve been reading the latest book by Gabe Lyons titled The Next Christians for a class I’m taking this semester at school. A lot of it builds on a book he helped with a few years back titled UnChristian which I’ll also be reading for class.

One of my favorites parts of the book so far is his chapter focused what culture is and how this next generation interacts with it. In the book culture is defined as “the air you breathe,” the clothes you wear, car you drive, music you listen to. It is merely a fact of life. Each piece of culture tells a story about a view of the world.

Many Christians spend their entire lives fighting against culture, doing everything they can to change all that is wrong in culture. To outsiders, Christianity then often becomes known more for what it is against than what it is for. I know, none of this is earth shattering or new news to you, but I think the next point is key.

Andy Crouch says,

“The only way to change culture is to create more of it.”

If we accept the definition of culture as the air we breathe then then we must come to realize that fighting against it does little good. Culture is not changed by reversing trends, it is changed by creating something new. Don’t like what you see in the world today? Create something better.

Lyons ends this section of the book by saying, “The next Christians are fast at work creating good culture. In doing so, they aren’t just reconstructing what’s broken; they are adding on a new dimension in the places they’ve been called to—restoring the truth, goodness, and beauty that’s been lost.”

Catalyst Atlanta 2010: Gabe Lyons from Catalyst on Vimeo.

Watching the last bit of the Grammy awards on Sunday night I found myself getting disgusted with the performance by Rihanna and Drake. It was what I think many people would agree as over the top sexuality which isn’t necessary for people to watch. I immediately wanted to speak out against it. But the reality is that kind of music is well accepted within our culture whether I like it or not. To speak out against it would only paint me as just another Christian who hates people who do things he doesn’t agree with.

Next time when you see something in culture that you believe displeases God, instead of telling everyone you know how much you dislike it, try creating something that would honor God instead.

(If you’d like to read more about the book, Scot McKnight has a new blog series on the book starting.)

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http://theycallmepastorbryan.com theycallmepastorbryan

Are you familiar with Neibuhr’s Christ and Culture? He offers 6 stances of how Christianity engages with culture. It’s been critiqued rather well by anabaptists, but I think it would add something to this conversation.

That is to say. While Crouch is correct that to change a culture means to create, I’m not sure that it doesn’t include the loud “no!” That is to say, while evangelical Christianity has been too known by what it is against, I don’t think withdrawing from having a voice at all is the answer.

I am thinking here of Hauerwas’ almost sectarian(anabaptist) tendencies in which the church is called to be a separate polis as the means for changing culture and I think that while the withdraw to ghettoism is a danger, embodied alternate ways of being is perhaps one of our strongest responses.
http://thoughtsaboutnothing.com Kyle Reed

interesting thoughts. i need to read this book (along with 23 other ones).
I really think this shift is happening now and will be seen in the next 15 years. Our generation seems to be leading this revolt against the idea of speaking out against culture. Which is very encouraging
Jason Wilkinson

Isn’t this how we create little Christian subcultures, too? Isn’t this how we come up with Christian bookstores, Christian music labels (which are largely run by larger, mainstream labels), bad Christian movies, Christian television stations, Christian video games and Christian awards programs (The Dove Awards)?

Does the larger society find this as attractive? Do we view these as transformational trends?

Not sure that creating more culture is the key. Perhaps it would be best to disciple more followers of Christ live out transformed lives in Christ in the occupations they participate in and lives they lead rather than creating “new culture”.
http://manofdepravity.com Tyler

I don’t think a Christian “creating culture” means that it becomes part of Christian subculture. In the book Gabe uses a lot of examples of how the “next Christians” are creating culture in a way that intersects with the whole of society, not just Christian culture.
http://manofdepravity.com Tyler

Haven’t read that book, but I am reading a book by Newbigin for class. It’s the first “recommended reading” instead of “required” that I’m going to read in seminary EVER

I think all those are fair points, I don’t think that never separating from culture is the answer, but I think the recent history has shown that fighting culture hasn’t been too helpful.
Jason Wilkinson

Can you give me one of Gabe’s examples? I’m still unsure of how “creating culture” does not turn into a subculture.
http://manofdepravity.com Tyler

In the book the examples are TWLOHA, Teach America, Paste Magazine, and Charity:Water. And a few others I can’t remember the names of.
http://theycallmepastorbryan.com theycallmepastorbryan

Which Newbigin book. Newbigin does a good job of recognizing both the danger of segmenting off and the danger of syncretism.

I guess I would say that recognizing that there’s a way the church can exist as an embodied alternative is what I lean towards. It gets away from “culture wars” while also offering a different route of the culture around us. Probably not perfect but I think it serves some pretty needed roles.

As far as cultural engagment, I think that we do well to engage with any where in our culture that promotes truth or beauty as both truth and beauty are ultimately rooted in the person of Christ. Our responsibility is to show how, while also showing those places where we are tempted to be misled. For instance the oversexualization of the music industry – I think there is much to be done in the ways of this sort of engagement. Though I will say I just find most pop r&b and hip hop to be fairly mindless and uncreative.
http://manofdepravity.com Tyler

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society.
http://topsy.com/manofdepravity.com/2011/02/15/how-to-change-culture/?utm_source=pingback&utm_campaign=L2 Tweets that mention Man of Depravity: How to Change Culture — Topsy.com

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http://www.daveingland.com Dave Ingland

This is one of those things–while many Christians disagree–where we as the church need to influence culture in the same context. The Christian response is to provide Christian alternatives, but they only attract other Christians. When we are able to provide alternatives that do not prostelytize and draw the interests of the population at large, those that also felt disgusted by the performance on the grammy’s you mentioned may speak up or disconnect from what they don’t like.

Without people voicing opinions and then having something in contrast to point to–that is still economically viable for media to promote–things will remain the same.
http://www.sexlessinthecity.net Anna Broadway

Not having watched the Grammys, but seen a few of the performance clips, I would say that even in the larger context of the performance, there were notes of hope and a brighter beauty that clearly resonated – some of them, interestingly, from musicians whose work has either been directly associated with “Christianity” at times (Bob Dylan) or parsed for Christian themes (Mumford and Sons). I don’t remember if or for how long Rihanna and Drake were trending on Twitter afterward, but the Mumford and Sons performance was clearly a hit; they were trending worldwide for about two days afterward. I find hope in that – that refreshing water still quenches spiritual thirst far better than the same-ole, same-ole.

Similarly, last night, an intensive study group/community I’m part of was talking about this David Foster Wallace observation that people on TV are never WATCHING TV, they’re living. Whereas people who watch TV are watching instead of living. This came up as part of a larger conversation about this very issue – Christians’ position vis-a-vis culture (one of the pieces we read was this Grenz article: http://www.stanleyjgrenz.com/articles/popculture.htm). So we were talking about how there are two very different ways of not taking in certain parts of culture: 1) because it’s perceived as bad and 2) because you don’t have time for it compared to all the other things you’re doing. I think there’s something in that, both for how we live our lives, and for what we encourage others to. Sometimes, maybe, yes, the answer IS to contribute to the true and the beautiful (if we’re called to be artists, for instance). But in other cases, the answer may be to awaken others’ to greater engagement with the true and beautiful, with life.