That attitude is starting to change. The late Bob Briner, a sports-marketing executive, sternly challenged Christians in his book "Roaring Lambs" to go beyond boycotting movies and try to bring a Christian influence to bear by working with, and even in, pop culture industries. Christian rock bands are more openly and avidly seek mainstream audiences. Christians working in Hollywood have been emboldened to meet to strategize about ways to have a greater effect on what scripts get made and how.
In the oldest Christian trade, the publishing industry, the change has come more slowly. But now Brazos Press, a new imprint of the revered evangelical publisher Baker Books, aims to bring an intellectually sophisticated Christian perspective to bear on secular culture.
A look at some of Brazos' upcoming titles reveals a surprisingly nuanced conversation between the religious and the secular. Stanley Hauerwas' "A Better Hope" will "look at the Church in the context of capitalism, democracy and post-modernity," according to Brazos marketing director Bobbi Jo Heyboer. "Eyes Wide Open," a book of cultural criticism by Christian Reformed author Bill Romanowski, discusses Bruce Springsteen, "ER," as well as "Titanic" and "The End of the Affair." "Many Christian critics think Christian criticism means noting the amount of profanity, sex or violence," says Romanowski, a professor of communications at Calvin College. But as the title indicates, Romanowski wants to get beyond that blinkered approach. "I have a section on sex and violence, but also ones on materialism, and gender stereotypes."
According to editorial director Rodney Clapp, while there are no denominational quotas, Brazos expects about a third of their authors to be evangelicals, another third mainline Protestants, and the rest Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. But while political and economic views will run the gamut from conservative to liberal and even radical, in religious terms they will all be "creedal Christians"--grounded in the creeds of the early church councils.
Clapp admits that, by taking Christian doctrine seriously, Brazos is "running against the grain" of a secular culture that exalts faith but disparages doctrine as a source of fanaticism and divisiveness. "People are averse to religion, but more friendly to spirituality, which can be put forth vaguely and amorphously and doesn't seem to disallow anything. But we see Christianity as a particular kind of spirituality, and indeed religion. We value the expression of religion through the church. We will be about promoting that."
Clapp believes that leaves a "wide circumference" for Christian writers and intellectuals. His own book, "Border Crossings: Christian Trespasses in Popular Culture and Public Affairs," ranges over territory including John Coltrane, Hank Williams, and "The X-Files."
Clapp points to Coltrane as an example of a cultural icon unfairly shunned by Christians. "Ten or fifteen years ago, prominent Christian evangelical colleges would say 'don't teach jazz in your conservatory of music.' They just want to say jazz is evil." But to Clapp, a jazz figure like Coltrane, whom Christians might dismiss as the Pied Piper of dissolute Beatniks, provides plenty of "grist for the mill" of a Christian critic. "Coltrane said he hoped eventually to be a saint. He was on a very deep religious pilgrimage. I don't try to make John Coltrane either into a devil or a Messiah. I ask what questions can a Christian critic bring to his life and music."
