We don’t understand culture-making because we don’t really make culture. We make artifacts. Single artifacts like the refrigerator and systems like education (see previous article) are the products of human skill,1 and they are imbued with meaning and significance. They share in the storytelling of their makers; they become part of the dialog of the world, communicating and helping humanity re-imagine life on earth. Artifacts are the building blocks of culture. By making artifacts, humans make sense of the world we inhabit. We create a cultural world, a World Outspoken. Too often, however, we make with little to no reflection on the kind of world that would be truly good and beautiful. Even worst, we don’t consider the stories at the core of our making, and we dutifully live into stories that are destructive. Culture-making is an active use of power, and we fail to use our power well.
The Church has a tenuous relationship with both culture-making and power. There’s an elevated discomfort and awkwardness whenever Christian’s attempt to discuss either subject. My students are a good microcosm of this reality. Most of my students are studying cultural engagement, the response to and interaction with existing cultural products and systems. For those unfamiliar with these kinds of programs, forgive my technical explanation, but it will help later when we explore reasons for culture-making. Students in a cultural engagement program will take at least one course titled something like “Theology and Culture,” “Cultural Hermeneutics,” and “Christianity and Culture.” In such courses, H. Richard Niebuhr’s seminal book, Christ and Culture, frames the conversation. His work presents five “types” of Christian responses to culture. My students don’t fit perfectly into Niebuhr’s types, but we’ll begin by summarizing the “types” in my classroom to better understand the importance of culture-making and how it differs from traditional models of cultural engagement.
Two Types of Students
Students in my courses divide into two types. The first wants to retaliate, to “go to war against the culture” for the sake of the gospel in public life. They want the city governed by “Christian principles,” and they have a hard time relating positively to any artifact of culture that isn’t created by Christians, particularly entertainment artifacts (movies, music, books, etc.). This type considers engaging culture mostly in political terms or retreating from culture in defensive compounds.
The second type is interested in operating in the cultural world alongside people pursuing justice and equality. In a way, this type is also “at war,” but the fight is rooted in different values; It’s a different fight. This type is listening with empathy to oppressed people and responding with action. They work alongside service groups, regardless of faith background, because they believe God is at work through their shared efforts with others. It is not that this group has forgotten or abandoned evangelism; it’s that this type of student sees a need for the Church to involve itself with the afflicted. If the first type sees cultural decay and retreats while pointing to the blots of mold in the culture, the second sees a different set of spots on everyone, Christians included, and extends a balm.2
Despite their differences, both types share the common assumption that right engagement with existing culture(s) is the only action available to Christians operating in the world. So, whenever I suggest that Christians empowered by the Holy Spirit should transform the earth and create new worlds rooted in the gospel, I inevitably have one or two students from either type who resist the idea. In response to my students and as a way of progressing the mission of World Outspoken, here are five reasons for culture-making. Again, before continuing, I recommend readers review what we mean by “culture” at WOS.
Five Reasons for Focusing on Culture-making
1) The Cultural Mandate
In The Social Construction of Reality, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman make the fascinating observation that all animals live in “closed worlds.” Humans, on the other hand, have “no species-specific environment.” Humanity’s “relationship to [their] environment is characterized by world-openness.”3 Mammals like Koalas and Pandas have limited habitats based on their biological makeup, but the entire earth is open to development as the human home. How is this relevant? It highlights the reality that humanity, from the beginning, had to cultivate, to create a world for their shared living. The earth is, in fact, open to humans in a way that it simply isn’t to any other creature. This, of course, forces questions on the human community. The mystery of this open world with all its possibilities compels us to ask: Where are we? Who are we? Why are we here? These questions direct us toward the existence of a transcendent, Divine being, and we begin to tell stories.
Christians believe the Bible makes this creative Being known in its first few pages. The Bible begins by telling us the story of God’s creative act. He made all that exists from nothing but His word. Then, at the climactic end of His work, He made man and woman “in His image,” so they may rule over all His creation (Gen. 1:26). He set the first couple in a garden and gave them the task of working (cultivating) and caring for the ground (Gen. 2:15). These three tasks: ruling, working, and keeping, are known as God’s cultural mandate for humanity, his appointed purpose for us. The story of the Bible invites us to see this world-openness as an invitation from God to share in making something more from the earth.
Cultures begin as stories. The astounding part of the Bible’s beginning is that God created, from His word alone, a good and beautiful world vested with potential and tasked us with developing it further. In other words, He commissioned us to make more culture. The key word here is "more." Remember, the first couple was set in a garden not an uncultivated, wild forest. God also used language, the connecting web of culture, to give them instruction, orienting them toward Him, the earth, and each other. Culture precedes the first couple. The first culture-maker is God. Made in God's image, we are tasked with continuing to share in His work by making in ways that reflect His character. Unfortunately, we don’t, but the mandate hasn’t been canceled. Culture-making is still the human purpose.
2) The Great Commission
The primary directive of all Christians is to preach the gospel, the true story of Jesus’ death and resurrection. This gospel reminds us that Jesus gathers to Himself a people that He then sends out to be witnesses, living testimonies of His power to transform what is broken and corrupted into something healed and new. Jesus introduces new cultural horizons to a corroded world. As in the beginning, the work of God precedes the work of His people. He sends His followers after him to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19). To do this well, we must think holistically about what disciples are and what it means to “make disciples.”
Disciples are followers or students. They follow their teacher in all senses of the word. They follow by obeying his/her instruction, and they follow in that they imitate their teacher’s character. “Disciples best learn how to practice [beliefs] through paideia, an apprentice-based pedagogy that involves following the examples of (i.e. imitating) others who are further along.”4 This imitation-style of learning directly connects disciple-making with culture-making. People become disciples as cultural-memes get translated into their way of being.5 Disciple-making is more than “converting” people to Christ. Making disciples means “cultivating in [people] the mind of Christ, “teaching them to observe” the supreme authority of Christ in every situation (Matt. 28:20 KJV).”6 Remember, in the previous article, we noted that culture enables this cultivation.
Culture-making allows us to care for the corporate dimension of disciple-making. We cannot disciple each person we encounter, orienting them correctly toward the good, beautiful, and true world available to them in Christ. However, by making culture, we extend our ability to give shape to the lives of our community. This does not mean that culture can save people. Individuals still need to share the gospel, but culture can help all people see more clearly the world enlivened by the gospel.
The cultural mandate and the great commission go hand-in-hand. Enabled by Christ and the power of His Spirit, we are once again sent to make as representative images of God. Dr. Vanhoozer reminds us that “the Church is thus not only the “people of the book” but also “the (lived) interpretation of the book.”7
3) Our Implicit Theology8
Already, this is a much wider vision for relating to culture. We tell stories and make as members of a cultural world, sharing in or damaging the work of God. Every artifact we make is embedded with our assumptions about our place, ourselves, and how life should be lived. These artifacts then communicate these assumptions to us and our community. In this sense, it can be said that culture is theology made concrete. Studying culture reveals that theology is communicated in two ways: Explicit and Implicit theology.
Explicit Theology is all that we teach, preach, write in doctrinal statements, pass on in catechisms, and teach in Sunday school curriculums. Explicit theology is our stated theology. It’s the explicit stories about God and the world. Implicit theology, however, is the subtle ways our culture reveals our stories and orients us to them. For instance, the refrigerator subtly communicates the theological belief that “humanity has the power to overcome natural processes.” The fridge is an artifact that reveals our implicit theology, our embedded beliefs. Note that if explicit and implicit theology are ever at odds, people will operate according to implicit theologies. For instance, I explicitly believe (this statement is proof) that the rate of food production and consumption in America is unsustainable and destructive. However, I haven't joined a CSA or another alternative food system. I still rely on the refrigerated supermarket. For now, the habits of culture overpower the ideals I value. If I’m going to make a change, I must consider culture-making; I must consider changing the culture that communicates an implicit theology I want to resist. "How” we do this is explained in the final point below.
4) The Longevity of Our Work
Simply stated: Culture has a longer shelf life than any isolated sermon or speech about anything from religious belief to food consumption. Christians who both reflect the gospel through preaching and culture-making, extend their work to future generations. The pastors in my classroom often wonder if I am supplanting their role as preachers with their role as culture-makers. I am not. Instead, I am arguing that, as preachers, they are uniquely positioned as storytellers to shape the culture of their congregations long after their ministries come to an official end.
In his award-winning novel, The Storyteller, Mario Vargas Llosa tells the story of a scattered Peruvian-Amazonian tribe known as the Machiguengas. The tribe has one member that connects them all, the storyteller. The storyteller is of sacred, indeed religious importance. The storyteller's job is simple enough: to speak. Storytellers' "mouths were the connecting links of this society that the fight for survival had forced to split up and scatter … Thanks to the storytellers, fathers had news of their sons and brothers of their sisters … thanks to [storytellers] they were all kept informed of the deaths, births, and other happenings in the tribe.”9 The storyteller did not only bring current news, he spoke of the past. He is the memory of the community, fulfilling a function like that of the troubadours of the Middle Ages. The storyteller traveled great distances to remind each member of the tribe that despite their separation, they still formed one community, sharing a tradition, beliefs, ancestors, misfortunes, and joys. The storytellers, writes Vargas Llosa, were the lifeblood that circulated through Machiguenga society giving it one interconnected and interdependent life.
The Machiguenga storyteller is “tangible proof that storytelling can be something more than mere entertainment … something primordial, something that the very existence of a people may depend on.”10 Like the Machiguenga storyteller, the preacher who intentionally speaks to shape his cultural world extends the life of his local congregation.
5) New Culture as Cultural Engagement
If forced to pick a “type” to identify with, I suspect most of my students would chose the “Christ transforming Culture” type from Niebuhr’s typology. I share my students’ disposition. The question for those interested in transforming culture is this: “Can the Church’s demonstration of the gospel change the world? If so, does this have more to do with changing human hearts or social structures, ideas, or institutions?”11
As a careful reader, Andy Crouch emphasizes the language in Niebuhr’s type: Christ transforming Culture. The transformation work is done by Christ, not the church.12 This sets us free from pressure and should inspire our boldest creativity. Our vocation is simply to be witnesses “and to be the embodiment of the coming Kingdom of God.”13 To bear witness and embody the Kingdom is to make new cultural worlds. The only way to transform the culture, to change our implicit theology, is by making more culture, displacing existing forms of culture.14 By making more culture, Christians create opportunities to invite people into a new world with new possibilities unseen in other cultural worlds.
Conclusion
World Outspoken exists to support Christian culture-makers seeking God's city. I’ve argued for the importance of culture-making as a way of continuing cultivation of earth, obeying the great commission, intentionally shaping implicit theology, extending the life of our work, and engaging existing cultures. Christians today will almost never make culture without incorporating elements of existing cultures. Indeed, this is the “already not yet” tension described by theologians. We are already in the new world, the Kingdom of Christ, but we are still residents of the old cultural worlds we inhabit. The local church makes as citizens of the world to come and as images of Christ in their resident world. My hope is that the Church would make with boldness and vigor.
Culture-making “power is “the capacity to define what is real.” The Church does this by enacting God’s word in particular times and places, for it is God’s word that defines what is ultimately real.”15
Footnotes
“Artifact” is a unique word built from the Latin words for human skill (arte) and objects or goods (factum). “Definition of ARTIFACT,” accessed July 12, 2018, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/artifact.
It should be noted that these types, like most if not all other types, are generalizations. Of course, there are exceptions to these rules, but these represent the overall themes present in my class discussions.
Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Anchor, 1967), 47.
Vanhoozer, 7.
Again, see our article, “What is Culture,” for more information on memes.
Vanhoozer, Faith Speaking Understanding. Italics are my own.
Vanhoozer, 2.
The following section is developed based on ideas found in the following work: Nancy Ammerman et al., eds., Studying Congregations: A New Handbook (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998).
Mario Vargas Llosa, The Storyteller: A Novel, trans. Helen Lane, First edition (New York: Picador, 2001).
Llosa.
Vanhoozer, Faith Speaking Understanding.
Andy Crouch, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, Edition Unstated edition (Downers Grove, Ill: IVP Books, 2008), 182.
James Davison Huner as quoted by Vanhoozer.
I’m indebted to Andy Crouch for the ideas in this article. His book gave shape to my thinking here. Crouch, Culture Making.
Vanhoozer, Faith Speaking Understanding, 8.
Cover Photo by Tamarcus Brown on Unsplash