Create Culture, Change the World

ORLANDO, Florida -- Throughout history, Christians have been known to wage war on culture.  Whether it is the fight against immorality, taking Christ out of Christmas in the public square, or the battle of bucking trends from Hollywood, people of faith have often fought vociferously to retain their biblical worldview.

Author Andy Crouch believes the Christian response to such perceived offenses is an insufficient understanding of what culture truly is.  In his new book, “Culture Making” (Intervarsity Press), Crouch contends that it is not enough to condemn and critique culture.  He believes the only way to change culture is to create it.

CBN.com Program Director Chris Carpenter recently sat down with Crouch to discuss whether God cares about culture, if Christians are called to transform the world, and the problems of having a Christian sub-culture.

A very basic question to start.  Everyone has their own interpretation of it.  What is culture in the context of this book?

It was a terrifying topic to take on because it means so many different things to so many different people.  So, what I actually wanted to do with the first third of this book is to just try to get us some common vocabulary.  We often speak about culture in this very broad way.  I think that is the most common thing.  That is what the problem is with our culture.  One of the really interesting things that I discovered was that there are people who spend a great deal of time thinking about culture and trying to define it. 

What kind of world does that start to shape?  Of course, it starts to do something that is bigger and over-arching things that we think of culture as doing.  Giving us meaning.  Giving us language.  Language gives us a way to communicate that we didn’t have before.  We start to be able to convey meaning to each other.  If you start by just thinking about the broadest scales you get very paralyzed and not know what to do.  But when you think about the culture of my neighborhood is made up of some zoning decisions, some architectural decisions, the ways people live their lives in my neighborhood, then that begins to be something I can actually engage with and interact with.

Is it possible for a single person to change culture?  Or, are we forced to ride along with this mysterious byproduct force that pushes society along?

We can’t change everything that is for sure.  Imagine if you and I wanted to change the English language.  Where would we start?  How could we do that?  We are going to speak English our whole lives.  It was there before we arrived and it will be there after we leave.  We would be very lucky if we could even introduce one new word into the English language.  So, there is a lot of culture that no one person will be able to change.  On the other hand, when you start thinking of culture as cultural goods at all of these different scales in all of these different places then you realize there are actually things I can change.  This is a really simple example but a couple of years ago we put up a swing in my back yard for my kids.  Well, that changed the culture of our back yard.  It actually changed the culture of our neighborhood because it is hung from this tree from about 30 feet up.  So, it is this big, long period swing.  Well, the other kids in the neighborhood want to come swing on it too.  That is a tiny thing but it was a change in culture.  It is a particular cultural artifact we put into our neighborhood.  But in a small way it actually did change the culture of our neighborhood.  Yes, people can change culture.  Nothing else does really.  It changes when people create something new.  That doesn’t mean we can control the change.  Sometimes, as Christians, we get ahead of ourselves with the rhetoric of changing the world.

This poses a good question.  As Christians, are we called to transform culture or to change the world?

I prefer to say that we are called create culture.  This is to say we are called to create actual cultural goods that represent some piece of what God would want to be true in the world.  The reason I am not so inclined to use the term “transform culture” is I think that is God’s job.  I think God is actually in the cultural transformation with us.  I don’t think it is wise for human beings to imagine we are in that scale of business.  God is for every culture.  He is in every culture.  He can take whatever little things we do and do really amazing things with them. 

It has been said that culture is the second most complicated word in the English language.  Why do you think that is?

Well, I think it is because it covers everything we as humans do.  It is the second most complicated word after nature.  It is ultimately about the whole reality of what it is to be human.  If you think biblically, what does God ask the first human beings to do?  Tend the garden which is culture – cultivate.  And then, He wants us to be in His image as creators.  To be cultivators and creators.  Everything that human beings do has flowed from that initial call to be culture makers.  It is complicated because the things we have made in the world are amazingly various, often wonderful, and often terrible.

Is there anything wrong with having a Christian sub-culture?  This is mostly in relation to entertainment.  I can’t tell you how many times I have been to a Christian concert and asked myself, ‘Where have I seen that before?”  Then I remember I saw it in popular culture.

I think there are some things to be dissatisfied with.  I don’t think we should be satisfied with a Christian sub-culture.  It’s understandable how the Jesus music movement started.  It was at a time when the Church really had lost its connection to some of the most vital parts of popular culture. I’m not just talking about fundamentalist churches but just churches where they were not engaging music, the amazing explosion of American popular music in the twentieth century.  None of that was even connecting at all.  It is understandable that the first impulse was let’s take these cultural forms which are not necessarily intrinsically negative and let’s pour Christian content into them.  What ended up happening, though, and no one intended it originally, is that those forms kind of became sealed off from the wider culture and became basically offered just to other Christians.  There are some things we do in the Church that I guess only Christians are interested in doing – mainly worship.  We need a culture of worship.  The culture around us is not going to tell us how to worship.  It is not going to be interested in worshipping alongside us.  They might want to come observe but they are not going to participate.  They are not going to create.  So, in that sense we are always going to have to borrow cultural forms for our worship.  But our neighbor lives in culture.  So, if we love our neighbor as Jesus Christ commands us how can we just create culture that only serves us?  We have to get out there and participate in trying to move the horizons of their culture in a way that they might start to imagine that the Gospel might be true.

Does God care about culture?  Man obviously does but how about God?

I think way more deeply than we have ever imagined.  Let’s look at two parts of that.  Genesis.  What God gives humanity to do is culture.  It’s God’s purpose before the fall.  What were Adam and Eve supposed to be doing?  God does not put them in the wilderness.  He puts them in a garden.  What is a garden?  It is nature plus culture.  God is the first culture maker.  We think of God as creating the world but He also plants a garden.  So, God himself has invested in culture.  You can say He seeded the world with culture.  He invested in it.  He made an initial deposit of culture in the world through the Garden of Eden.  Then he asks the woman and the man to tend and keep the garden.  Take care of it and cultivate it.  Here is the other, more interesting thing – there is this little interesting story when Adam is lonely the one thing that is not good is the lack of a companion.  God brings the animals before Adam and waited to see what he would call them.  Whatever the man called every living creature that was its name.  I find this so fascinating because with these animals that God has created, surely, He could say, ‘Camel, cock roach, etc …” But instead, what does God do?  He steps back, pauses, and He waits for Adam to create.  We could think all God wants Adam to do is just keep it the way it is.  Just take care of it.  But He actually creates this space where Adam’s specific job is to create a name that wasn’t there before.  So, cultivating and creating are the original assignments for human beings.  It is what we were created to do. 

Now, go to Revelation 21.  Here is the thing I just discovered a few years ago that I had never thought about.  When Revelation 21 describes the end of the whole story, what we see is a city.  What is a city but a place where culture has reached critical mass.  When you think about a city it is a place where if you walk a few blocks out of town you are in nature.  Here is this city, it is not a garden.  It is really interesting.  At the end of history when God undoes all the effects of sin and redeems it all, He doesn’t say, ‘Ok, guess what?  You get the garden back.’  No, it is a city. 

We’ve had this idea that the only eternal things are people, or souls – like what God really cares about in history is saving souls.  But when you actually look at Genesis and Revelation, God’s whole plan all along was for culture.  So, God cares about it way more than we thought.

Do you think Christians need to rethink their position on culture from what is currently the generally accepted viewpoint?

For a while we were really good at condemning culture.  We would try to figure out what was wrong and then we would condemn it.  Then some of us got really good at critiquing culture – that is where we get into worldview.  Some of us are really good at copying – finding what is new and fresh and doing a Christian version of it.  I would actually say that these days the main posture is that people consume it.  Whatever culture offers, whatever is on we watch.  Whatever there is to buy we buy.  We are really not that critically reflective about how something shapes us.  If we embrace the postures of creating and cultivating it gives us legitimacy so that when we condemn something it actually carries some weight.  Or, when we critique something it is a telling critique that actually makes sense.  Or, when we copy something it is not just imitation.  And when we consume we are not just consumers.  We are actually fully enjoying what we have.

As an author, what is the one thing you want people to take away with them after reading “Culture Making”?

I hope people will feel encouraged that they can do something.  I think we often feel so paralyzed by the bigness of the culture around us.  I hope people realize there is something you can cultivate that no one else can, something you can create that no one else can create.  The other thing I hope they will do is look for some partners, some cultural collaborators.  This is because culture is never made by individuals.  It is always made through partnerships.  The really cool thing about this book is that it could seem it is only for one kind of person, a culturally creative person, but really every human being is called to cultivate or create something.  I hope people come away from this book and say, ‘Oh, there is something I can do.’  It may not change the world but you never know, it might.