Culture Making -- A Review


CULTURE MAKING: Recovering Our Creative Calling. By Andy Crouch. Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2008.


More than half a century ago, theologian H. Richard Niebuhr explored the relationship of Christian faith to culture in his book Christ and Culture. Niebuhr offered five typologies for this relationship – Christ against, Christ of, Christ above, Christ and Culture in Paradox, and Christ the Transformer of Culture. Evangelical writer Andy Crouch offers a sixth possibility – Christ the Culture Maker. Crouch doesn’t bring Niebhur into the conversation until he is well into the book, but the question Niebuhr raised long ago drives the book. That question is: how do we as Christians engage culture? Niebuhr noted that the debate over this relationship “is as confused as it is many-sided” (Christ and Culture, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1951, p. 1).

Crouch doesn’t dwell on Niebuhr’s typologies, but he is concerned about how Christians – and Evangelicals in particular – relate to culture. In his view there is much too much condemnation on one hand or copying on the other. We may talk about transformation, but we don’t do much with that. The book is his invitation to change the dynamic.

The book is divided into three sections – Culture, Gospel, Calling. The first section seeks to define culture and provide the reader with a vocabulary and tools of analysis to explore the dynamics of culture. In his first chapter he defines culture as the “horizon of the possible.” It includes but is more than what one finds in the museum or the concert hall. He also reminds us – perhaps more than Niebuhr understood at the time – that there is more than one culture. Culture begins at birth as we begin to engage our world. – we are, Crouch suggests, “hardwired for nothing but learning” (p. 19). He explores this dynamic in the context of history and Scripture, noting the superiority of the biblical story of creation over its competitors. As he explores these dynamics, he states that “culture is what we make of the world” (p. 23). Even as God is the Creator of all things, we who are God’s image, are called to take that which is and make something new from it. Culture also involves interpretation, for not only do we make new things, we try to make sense of that which already is before us. Art is an example of the first dimension and language of the second. Although we sometimes find ourselves standing against “culture,” culture itself isn’t optional.

Culture is not individualistic. It is instead a shared entity. An artifact isn’t culture until it’s shared with another person/group. Culture exists in spheres (sites and traditions) and in scales (small to large). There is a family culture even as there is a national culture – all moving out in concentric circles. Although Crouch isn’t just interested in transforming what is – he admits that there is a place for condemnation and criticism, but these are insufficient approaches – he recognizes that culture making isn’t done in a vacuum.

Culture making involves more than building something new. It often involves raising questions about what is and tearing down what was. It recognizes that change is necessary but not all change is progress. His greatest concern is that too often Christianity has become disembodied – it doesn’t change the world, it simply analyzes it. But beyond this, culture making involves both cultivation of what is and creation of what is not yet. Reflecting on the tendency to either condemn or criticize culture, he notes that there has been a growing trend toward either culture copying among Evangelicals – and not all of that copying has had positive results (witness the growth of what many of us call the trading in Jesus Junk) – or simply consuming it uncritically. There is another way, but it will require that we create more culture.

“So if we seek to change culture, we will h ave to create something new, something that will persuade our neighbors to set aside something existing set of cultural goods for our new proposal.” (p. 67).
Creation of something new, however, must be done in context of that which is – and that requires of us the skills and willingness to cultivate that which is good.

We relate to culture in terms of gestures and postures. Some are positive and some negative. When gestures such as condemnation, critique, copying and consumption become postures what is for the moment becomes a settled point of view. There are, of course, postures that are biblical and should be welcomed. Two of these postures that should be welcomed are those of the artist and the gardener – the creator and the cultivator. But these postures, are not strongly present in today’s evangelical culture.

Having defined culture and the human relationship to it, Crouch takes the reader on an extended journey through the biblical story. He begins in the garden and moves to the city (Babel). We encounter both the good and the bad – creation and fall. Genesis 1-11 is the primordial story (he uses this term in such a way that suggests that he does not take this section of Genesis as literal history), that moves from creation to fall and the aftermath – for culture must deal with the consequences of sin. But the story doesn’t end on this sour note, for beginning in Genesis 12 we encounter God’s choice of a nation by which redemption is undertaken. The people God chooses maybe small, but they are blessed and called to a program of cultural creation. From this point on through Malachi we see the process by which Israel is educated in its faith, which is humanity’s cultural dependence on its Creator.

The story turns with the birth of Jesus. In choosing Abraham, God chose a small nation to inculcate the road to redemption of humanity – which involves redemption of culture. But in Jesus that process is turned outward to the rest of the world. Jesus is, by his estimation, a culture maker. But before he is a creator of culture, he is a cultivator of culture – that is he embraces and cultivates his Hebrew heritage. Indeed, until his ministry begins, he lives a normal life. But then Jesus moves from cultivation to creation. For in his ministry, Crouch says that when Jesus touched “Israel’s cultural inheritance, he brought something new to it” (p. 137). The Sermon on the Mount is perhaps the best example of how he took this inheritance and expanded it and thus changed the horizons of human experience. This act of creation also involves encountering a Roman cross, a sign of Roman power and brutality. And so even as he was a culture creator, he suffered on “the worst that culture can do.” The story, of course, doesn’t end with Jesus suffering, but with the Resurrection, which Crouch suggests is a culture shaping event. Borrowing from N.T. Wright, he points to how the Resurrection changed human life and experience. Simply witness the change of Sabbath from seventh to first day of the week. The

Resurrection he suggests is the “hinge of history,” its effects be felt to this day. It also, he says, shows that culture making in the image of God involves “not power but trust” (p. 145).

This story that takes a new turn with Jesus continues with the story of Pentecost and beyond, a story that takes us from the reversal of Babel to the embrace of the Gentiles. This is a story of inclusion and change, a movement from what he calls ethos (custom) to ta ethne (the nations). What begins in the primordial story ends with the mythos of Revelation. In the new Jerusalem, the restored city, culture finds its end and humanity its fulfillment of its original purpose found in Genesis 1.

In exploring the way culture and the biblical story interact, Crouch insists that “culture is God’s original plan for humanity and it is God’s original gift to humanity, both duty and grace” (p. 175). God’s intention for culture is not found fulfilled in Christendom, which never fully embraces the Gospel. There is something more.

The third section deals with calling. It reminds us that we as individuals cannot change the world. We proclaim our intention but at best we’re able to change only our corner of the world. This is true despite the fact that we are called to be culture makers and changers. The problem is that too often we are more changed by the culture than we change it. There are no predictors of success, especially on a large scale. Too often the unintended consequences of our actions undermine our positive purpose (witness the green house gases emitted by the engines of human progress). So, there is a paradox – a calling and an inability to fulfill that calling. Nonetheless there are traces of God in the world. But, like Lincoln we must be reticent about claiming too quickly God’s work in our context. Biblically, the Exodus and the Resurrection are signs of God’s action in the world. In these events God’s purpose is revealed, for in them God lifts up the powerless and engages the powerful – using both for God’s creative purposes. As for a modern example, Crouch suggests the ending of South Africa’s practice of Apartheid – that was cultural change on a massive scale. Our calling, as individuals, is to join with God in what God is already doing. This requires an expression of power, and to illustrate this he points to Princess Diana and Mother Teresa. They are as different as two women can be, but both exhibited great power, but in different ways. What Crouch wants to convey is that while it’s unlikely any of us can become Diana, we can all become Mother Teresa. Few can become royalty, but we can all take up the way of the servant. Power is not inherently evil. It simply must be disciplined by service and stewardship.

This calling of ours requires us to embrace God’s definition of power but it also involves community. Again we’re reminded that culture is a shared thing. He uses the principle of 3:12:120 to note the way in which we work in different scales to create culture. The three represents the handful of partners with whom we engage in culture creation. That three will need further assistance – the 12 - - and then more – the 120. Cultural innovation, it appears requires personal relationships. To accomplish this work requires grace. This process will involve suffering (as it did for Jesus) and gladness. Grace is that force that allows us to move forward, knowing that our contributions are not complete. Grace sustains us in the midst of failure, and all culture creation involves some degree of failure.

This is an interesting and challenging book. The audience is the Evangelical world, a world given too much to condemnation, copying, and consumption. There is a strong orthodox tone to the interpretation of Scripture, but not always in a literalistic fashion. I wasn’t totally convinced that the Resurrection produced cultural change because the Sabbath moved from one day to another. In one sense it did, but for the Jewish people it didn’t. Nevertheless, one need not be an Evangelical to learn from this work. The call to be culture makers is a valid one. True culture change requires creation of new and abiding artifacts. Even if the core theological presuppositions are conservative there is enough breadth here to undergird our calling to be partners with the Creator in the process of culture creation.

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