Part 1 – Review of Culture Making by Andy Crouch
(rest of the review: Part 2, Part 3, Conclusion)
After hearing an interview with Andy Crouch on Mars Hill Audio, I found the book in our local library. The book is a helpful description of what culture is and how one makes an impact. Many of the ideas in the book come up from time to time on the Mars Hill Audio Journal, so the book did not have the groundbreaking impact on me that it may have on a general audience.
Crouch defines culture as not just pop culture nor the current prevailing mood, but as primarily something we make. It is a collection of human works. Much in the book is helpful but rather than provide a complete synopsis, I’ll focus on the several ideas that were new to me.
1) Crouch lists four ways Christians have interacted with culture in the last 150 years:
Condemn – withdraw, separate, late 19th/early 20th century
Critique – 20th cent. evangelicals, F. Schaeffer; worldview analysis
Copy – adopt, with slight changes. Example is CCM – Contemprary Christian Music
Consume – most Christians today, unthinking involvement
Crouch calls these four “gestures” and states each may be “appropriate responses to particular cultural goods”. The danger is when a gesture becomes a “posture”, which is an unconscious default position. Crouch relates how he formerly adopted a posture of suspicion and critique, as he noted widespread cultural decay. He later realized “two postures that are most characteristically bibilical … artist and gardener”. Artists create, gardeners cultivate.
I found these four categories insightful and see how becoming cramped in one particular orientation can be dangerous. May we stay teachable as we properly discern what is worthy in the Lord’s sight.
Continued in Part 2
See it at Amazon: Culture Making