{"id":59,"date":"2008-11-07T06:40:55","date_gmt":"2008-11-07T06:40:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/textmessages\/2008\/11\/inter.html"},"modified":"2008-11-07T06:40:55","modified_gmt":"2008-11-07T06:40:55","slug":"inter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/11\/inter.html","title":{"rendered":"Cultivators and Creators: An Interview with Andy Crouch"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CultureMaking.jpg\"<\/span>Andy Crouch’s Culture Making: Rediscovering Our Creative Calling<\/a><\/span>\u00a0is the Christian book of the year–its Publisher’s Weekly nod for best religion book won’t be its last. The concept of “culture” has been something of a snare for American Christians–we’ve critiqued culture and we’ve copied culture, but we’ve not always cultivated viable cultures of our own.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
Crouch sorts all this out helpfully in Culture Making<\/a><\/span>. The book will be much-discussed for years to come, and I look forward to listening to the conversations that it inspires, and, with grace, joining with friends to become part of the change it demands.\u00a0<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Crouch was kind enough to answer some questions I had about his book. The Q&A is after the jump.\u00a0<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Evangelicals talk and think a lot about “worldview,” especially the\u00a0importance of having a “biblical worldview.” As you know, there is a Christian industry that produces\u00a0curriculum, training camps, seminars, and books devoted to this\u00a0end. What are the points of distinction between the notion of a worldview\u00a0and your work on “culture”?<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Worldview is a good name for the essential idea that all of us make\u00a0culture from some starting point. Every time we set out to create any\u00a0cultural good, we begin with the way we believe the world is and ought\u00a0to be. These questions of how the world is and ought to be have deep\u00a0religious significance, so all people of faith (not just\u00a0evangelicals!) should care about them.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

However, while worldview is a great place to begin, it’s not a very\u00a0good place to stop. All too often the evangelical fascination with\u00a0worldview comes down to extended analyses or critiques of culture, and\u00a0highly abstract presentations of the basic biblical convictions about\u00a0the world. Yet we never get to the crucial question of what culture we\u00a0are actually sustaining and making. I call it the academic fallacy: the idea that once you’ve analyzed something, your job is done. But\u00a0human cultures are strangely immune to mere critique. If they weren’t,\u00a0film critics would have an influence over which movies are actually\u00a0successful! But I’ll bet you $84 million–the current box office gross\u00a0of BEVERLY HILLS CHIHUAHUA–that they don’t. The truth is that you\u00a0haven’t changed culture when you critique<\/span>\u00a0culture–you haven’t\u00a0changed it until you’ve created<\/span>\u00a0culture. And that is a much more\u00a0complex and messy process than the phrase “biblical worldview” usually\u00a0conveys.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

You’ve said you want to offer a new vocabulary to the evangelical\u00a0conversation on culture. What do you mean?<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I’d like to move us from the dominant postures that characterized\u00a0evangelicals in the twentieth century–condemning, critiquing, copying,\u00a0and consuming culture–to the language that is rooted in the Genesis\u00a0stories of humanity’s creation, where we see our primordial ancestors\u00a0called to the roles of cultivators<\/span>\u00a0and creators<\/span>\u00a0of culture. When\u00a0we see ourselves as cultivators, we ask, what is already good, in the\u00a0natural and cultural world, and how can we keep it good? When we see\u00a0ourselves as creators, we ask, what is missing in the world that we\u00a0need to take the risk of offering to the world? I think it’s fair to\u00a0say that, right now, evangelical Christians aren’t known primarily for\u00a0their cultivation or their creativity. But I think that can change.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I also want to warn us about the dangers of some common phrases we\u00a0use. Evangelicals talk about “transforming culture” a lot–a term we\u00a0got from H. Richard Niebuhr’s famous book, Christ and Culture<\/span>–but I\u00a0think that the transformation of culture is properly speaking God’s\u00a0job, not ours. To borrow a phrase, it’s above our pay grade. Or to put\u00a0it another way, transforming culture is very much a biblical vision,\u00a0but the subject of the phrase is not “Christians,” it’s “Christ.”\u00a0Christians are as caught up in the messy reality of culture as anyone\u00a0else, and who are we to say that our efforts to transform it will do\u00a0more good than harm? I much prefer to speak about cultivating and\u00a0creating–those are human-scale, feasible activities that, if carried\u00a0out faithfully, can become part of God’s ultimate work in the world.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What does culture-making mean for those of us who spend a lot of\u00a0time home-making and child-rearing, working office jobs, fixing sinks or\u00a0cars, etc.?<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Well, this is part of why I actually ended up stressing cultivating<\/span>\u00a0as much as creating<\/span>. Most of us spend most of the time cultivating:\u00a0keeping what is already good in culture, good. So when you fix a sink,\u00a0you are keeping the cultural good of plumbing good. That is actually a\u00a0deeply dignified human response to God’s original call to “tend and\u00a0keep” the world. When we pass on the best of human culture to others,\u00a0by raising children or following generally accepted accounting\u00a0principles or replacing a catalytic converter, we are participating in\u00a0culture making.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But I also think that most of us are called to introduce something new\u00a0into the world that wasn’t there before. If you’re a plumber, it may\u00a0be as simple as creating a slightly new, different, and better way of\u00a0doing business with your customers. If you’re working in an office,\u00a0there are probably any number of things that don’t function as well in\u00a0your company as they should. Almost all of us can be part of creating\u00a0a new little bit of culture–a new way of communicating, a way to\u00a0celebrate success or handle failure, a more efficient or effective way\u00a0to handle tedious tasks–that can truly improve the world right around\u00a0us. The best companies, like Toyota, empower every worker to stop\u00a0everything–stop a whole production line worth a hundred thousand\u00a0dollars an hour!–in order to identify a problem or introduce an\u00a0improvement. It’s a crucial idea that is rooted in our essential\u00a0identity as creative creatures. We aren’t machines. We get\u00a0dissatisfied doing things over and over exactly the same way, because\u00a0we all are creative, and when human organizations are functioning\u00a0well–whether families or businesses or governments–they make space for\u00a0that kind of creativity.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We’re having this conversation in a time when megachurches are flourishing\u00a0and in some cases occupying entire regions through satellite campuses. Such\u00a0churches often leave huge cultural footprints and utilize Madison Avenue\u00a0skills like “branding” and “messaging.” But they also emphasize gathering in\u00a0smaller groups, and having regular intimate connections. What does the\u00a0megachurch offer, and what does it take away from, the project of culture\u00a0making?<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I like to ask a pair of questions about every cultural artifact–which\u00a0includes phenomena like megachurches. What does this cultural artifact\u00a0make possible? And what does it make impossible, or at least a lot\u00a0more difficult? It’s worth noting that cultural innovators often\u00a0trumpet the “possibilities” created by their new cultural goods, while\u00a0de-emphasizing or passing over the “impossibilities” those goods\u00a0create at the same time.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the case of the megachurch, they have made possible a level of\u00a0technical excellence in many domains that simply was not associated\u00a0with the church in the twentieth century. Churches are now the objects\u00a0of case studies at Harvard Business School–they have caught up to, and\u00a0in a few cases (like lighting and video production) are sometimes\u00a0leading, the broader culture. They have become expert wielders of the\u00a0same panoply of technological devices that corporations and\u00a0celebrities have used to broadcast their messages.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This has a strange dual effect on cultural creativity. At the “pro” level, the level of the people paid to wield those technological tools, churches are fostering real creativity. So church musicians are\u00a0often every bit as skilled as the folks playing stadium gigs with\u00a0touring rock bands. I would put the best preachers in America up against their counterparts on Saturday Night Live for the ability to hold an audience and make them laugh, cry, and think.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But at the level of people in the pews, all of this technical excellence simply reinforces one of the dominant trends in technological society, which is that we are less and less able to do<\/p>\n

anything but consume the products others create. There is more professional musicianship, but less congregational singing. There is more effective preaching, but less lay education and formation. There is a widespread sense of dissatisfaction, as Willow Creek’s REVEAL\u00a0study has shown, with individuals’ own ability to shape a meaningful spiritual life, “intimate” small groups notwithstanding. As the pros get better at what they do, the rest of us, quite naturally, become more passive in our consumption of their brilliant work. But the irony\u00a0is that eventually this hollows out the church–it becomes a church of consumers, with all the shallowness and instability that entails.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

However, there’s another question I like to ask. Once any cultural good is in the world, what new culture do people start to create in response? There is a whole countertrend going on of small churches that ask a lot of their members, that require participation rather than anonymity. And the megachurches themselves are recognizing that they need to change, though I’m not sure they yet understand how much they have relied on the technological, consumer culture for their “success.” I still expect them to make major course adjustments that may well correct some of the deficiencies we see, but it may also be that, like many grand church buildings in American downtowns, in another generation the megachurches will be largely empty shells while something else much more creative and generative is happening elsewhere.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I knew you were a Christian writer writing a Christian book, but I must say,\u00a0I was awfully surprised at how much of your book on culture was about the\u00a0Bible. Of all things! What does the Bible tell us about participating in\u00a0culture, about making culture? I’m especially interested in why you see the\u00a0Bible’s vision of culture as “radical.”<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Bible’s vision of culture is radical because it sees culture at the root of human being and blessing. Culture is not just an optional add-on or distraction from our true nature–it is the very thing we were created to do from the beginning, and will do into eternity. We are created to cultivate and create–in Ken Myers’s phrase, to make something of the world. Culture, in fact, is not our idea–it is God’s idea.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And the Bible’s vision of culture is radical because the Bible presents God as intimately involved in culture from the very beginning. When Adam and Eve do a bit of culture making after they eat the fruit, sewing together fig leaves for themselves, God responds by\u00a0providing improved culture–leather garments–that will be much better suited to a harsh world after Eden. God creates a nation–a cultural tradition extended through time–called Israel and forms it with explicit (and to many Bible readers, long and boring) cultural instructions in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Most radically, the Son of God becomes a human being and participates–for thirty years, he does nothing else!–in the life of a particular culture, the culture of Roman Judea. Finally, the Bible’s vision of the renewal of all things includes a renewal of culture. The new earth is the home of a\u00a0city, not just a restored garden: a place where human culture comes to its full flourishing rather than being put back in its place, as it were. From start to finish, the biblical vision is a cultural vision, not just a “religious” or “spiritual” one.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Your call to Christians to make culture is partly eschatological. “Culture,”\u00a0you write, “is the furniture of heaven.” You show how the Bible’s last book,\u00a0Revelation, suggests that good, lasting cultural creations will find a place\u00a0in the new Jerusalem. In what ways would you like this understanding of\u00a0Revelation to reorient Christians in their approach to culture?<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I believe that just as I hope to be present in the new creation in a body that is recognizably my own, while also transformed and redeemed (just as the reports of Jesus after the resurrection suggest that he was recognizably Jesus, while also mysteriously different as well), I can also hope that the best of human culture will be present, although also redeemed and transformed. Revelation says that “the glory of the nations” will be brought into the New Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This changes what we think we’re up to here on earth. We have the opportunity to bend our energies toward the creation of cultural goods that might actually have a chance of being called “the glory” of our own cultural tradition. This is very different from the idea of creating “Christian culture” for a “Christian subculture,” where excellence doesn’t matter so much as sticking a fish emblem on everything. The ultimate test for Christians creating culture should be, do we believe that what we are creating might possibly make it into the New Jerusalem? Are we cultivating and creating the glory of the ethnic heritage, the national heritage, that God has given us to steward and build upon? It’s a demanding but also liberating vision that can include, as we already observed, everything from art to plumbing (since I, for one, definitely think that plumbing is part of the glory of the nations!).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Finally, what are some of your favorite examples of Christians who are\u00a0making culture today?<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I think we are on the verge of a renaissance in the visual arts, led by artists like Makoto Fujimura and Bruce Herman. They are not as widely known as they should be, but they are doing peerless work of cultivating and creating. There are some truly amazing young artists\u00a0following in their footsteps as well.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I happen to love two great examples of fast food chains that treat their workers well, respect their customers, and serve truly tasty food, both founded or owned by Christian entrepreneurs: the West Coast’s In-n-Out Burgers and the Southeast’s Chick-Fil-A. (Not that I recommend their cultural products for daily consumption, but once a month or so, boy, are they good.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I also love countless local stories that no one has ever heard of: the mother-daughter book club in northern California that includes several Christian families along with families with other faiths and no faith; the small group of inner city residents in Atlanta who bought a bench, painted it, and planted flowers next to it on a busy street with the goal of creating “the most beautiful bus stop in the city”; the burgeoning number of churches led by second- and third-generation immigrants from Asia who are finding ways to keep their Asian cultural heritage alive while also being wholeheartedly Christian and American as well.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The truth is that Christians are already doing this, all over the place, at all scales and in all spheres of culture. We just haven’t\u00a0recognized that what they are doing is at the very heart of the\u00a0Christian good news. I think that is going to change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andy Crouch’s Culture Making: Rediscovering Our Creative Calling\u00a0is the Christian book of the year–its Publisher’s Weekly nod for best religion book won’t be its last. 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