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?
Reading Romanowski (and Mouw) encouraged me. Just when you are ready to
give up on culture and consign it all to death and the devil, or cave in
to it and forfeit your Christian distinctiveness, he reminds us that there
is a way, not always easy, of critical engagement and even grateful
appreciation for the music, movies, and art of not just a Mozart but even
of our American pop culture.
The Journey with Jesus: Notes to Myself
Copyright ©2002 by Dan Clendenin. All Rights Reserved.
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