God's Grace in Popular Culture
Two Books
Week of Monday, September 16, 2002
A little over ten years ago James Davison Hunter, a Christian professor at the University of Virginia, wrote a book that for many Christians gave voice to what they had been thinking, feeling and experiencing for some time. The book was called Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (1991), and for many people his military metaphor defined the terms of debate with which we understand modern, American culture: it is a culture of “secular humanists” who oppose traditional “family values,” of “scientific atheists” who deride the beliefs of religious people, a culture that in a sense has lost its super-ego that would provide any social restraint about almost anything. In short, it is a culture bereft of God's presence, a culture, to borrow the title from the book by the conservative judge Robert Bork, that is Slouching Towards Gomorrah (1996).
There can be no question that our country has experienced a drastic moral shift in the past two generations that expresses itself in any number of ways—the television, music and movies of popular culture, intellectual life at our universities, social policies regarding the family, crime rates, drug usage, sexual mores, divorce rates, and so on. But is all the news bad? Is it possible to see the redemptive presence of God in our culture? Is there any good news? This summer I read two books that would never deny the gist of the trends analyzed by Hunter, Bork, and many others, yet they remind us of other important truths. One book explores the idea of God's “common grace” to all humanity, redeemed or not, in some arcane themes and thinkers of the Dutch reformed tradition; the other book searches for God in contemporary pop culture. Both authors remind us that the military metaphor of a culture war is not the only news.
Richard Mouw is the president of Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, and he takes his title from a favorite hymn of mine called “This Is My Father's World” (1901) by Maltbie Babcock. His book is called He Shines In All That's Fair (2001), which is in fact a line from the second verse of Maltbie's hymn celebrating the goodness of God in all of creation. Our Christian faith teaches us to be inclusive and to love everyone, says Mouw, but in fact we can be very exclusionary and world-denying, dividing the world up between the damned and the saved. There are Biblical grounds for this, too (cf. 1 John 2:15–16). While it might thus be clear what we do not have in common with the rest of humanity, we must also think about the implications that God's grace is common to all people without exception, that He gives rain and sun to the just and the unjust alike because He is “kind to the evil and ungrateful” (Matthew 5:45, Luke 6:35). Just how and on what basis do we love the world, its culture(s), its human institutions, its scientific learning, and so on, as God surely must (John 3:16)?
Mouw is confident that there is such a thing as common grace, but he is not sure how to define it. His precise question then is this:
How do we take with utmost seriousness the need to be clear about the lines between belief and unbelief, between those who live within the boundaries of saving grace and those who do not, while at the same time maintaining an openness to—even an active appreciation for—all that is good and beautiful and true that takes place outside of those boundaries (pp. 32–33)?God created all the world and seven times proclaimed it “good” (Genesis 1). He shines in all that's fair. Still, we know the world is fallen and in desperate need of redemption. At the end of his short book Mouw wants to affirm that he is not a universalist; he does not believe that all people experience God's saving grace; but he is inclined, to quote another hymn, to emphasize “the wideness in God's mercy” to all people without exception rather than the exclusionary “us against them” mentality that dominates many Christian circles and finds expression in the battle lines drawn in the so-called culture wars (p. 100).
Bill Romanowski is professor of communication arts and science at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His new book Eyes Wide Open (2002) explores how we might look for God in popular culture. For many Christians this must seem oxymoronic, because for so many believers popular culture is an irredeemably evil wasteland whose influences are only negative. Any parent who has listened to the drive time shock jocks on FM radio who pitch their shows to teenagers knows that there is at least some serious and unsettling truth in this position. Other believers simply take a consumption approach, watching most any and everything with little critical awareness. Who has not been to a movie with fellow Christians and felt a little squeamish about what others seem to so blithely enjoy? Romanowski has written a popular level book that most Christians should find accessible; it is a helpful guide to a crucial topic about following Jesus in the modern world.
Here are three examples from my own life with which you might resonate. Just yesterday I was walking my dog when a teenager pulled up to the stoplight in a Mercedes. His urban rap music was incredibly loud; it all sounded so very angry, vulgar and violent to me. Was there a more graceful, constructive, and appreciative way—some distinctly Christian way— that I might have thought about that kid and his music? Or again, every time I go to Hollywood Video in an effort to keep culturally informed, I wander around the store for a half hour or so feeling increasingly ambivalent. James Bond movies seem harmless, but do I want my teenage daughter to absorb their portrayal of women as brainless sex objects who are craven to men? I laugh at the Austin Powers movies, but later I wonder: is this clever social satire or cultural rot? Then I realize with a sinking feeling that, try as I might, I will never prevent my daughter from watching Bonds and Powers. Finally, why do I dislike so-called Christian music so much? Is there something wrong with me, or am I on to something when I think that its content is banal and preachy while its aesthetic quality is marginal?
If you have had thoughts and experiences like these, Romanowski will help you. Beyond simple rejection and wholesale acceptance, neither of which is acceptable for the believer, Romanowski wants to help us move to a place of critical engagement with the popular arts. The source of sin and impurity, he argues, comes from within us and not from without (Mark 7:21–23), so simply writing off popular culture or swallowing it wholesale are cheap ways out of a complex situation.
His book explores any number of fascinating questions:
- Why are the viewing habits of evangelicals no different than those of non-Christians?
- Does popular culture reflect or shape society?
- Is there such a thing as “Christian” art? If so , what criteria would define it?
- Are Christian crossover artists like Amy Grant kidding themselves or do they have an effective ministry?
- What role might Christians like Rene Russo play in mainstream Hollywood?
- Why has “family friendly” television not become the market force that many expected?
- How might we discover distinctly Christian themes in the works of someone like Bruce Springsteen?
- What are the key themes and features of popular culture?
- What would a Christian matrix for cultural analysis look like?
The Journey with Jesus: Notes to Myself Copyright ©2002 by Dan Clendenin. All Rights Reserved.
