Must Read: Ken Myers’ Summer Letter on Cultural Renewal

from Stand Firm by Sarah

I've rarely read anything so pithy and yet so descriptive of the cultural transformation to which I believe we as Christians are called and at which we are so abysmally failing as the Christian Church in 21st century America.Make certain you read it all, over at Mars Hill Audio, which is doing yeoman's work at trying to get Christians to think, act, and discern wisely:

Several years ago, I attended a day-long colloquium on the role of Christian education in encouraging “cultural renewal.” In attendance were educators from all levels (K-12, universities, seminaries) and pedagogical options (classical, home, distance). Early in our conversation, I suggested that our discussion would amount to little if we did not identify the specific patterns of cultural decadence that we were hoping to reverse and overcome. My suggestion was based on the awareness that, among some Christians, “renewal” meant that we should accompany popular cultural projects with cheerleading chaplaincies, peppering the cultural status quo with vaguely Jesusy platitudes, and failing to make distinctions between healthy and sick cultural trends. Unless our little group had a concrete discussion about specific things we thought were in need of change, I felt we would be wasting time.

Later in the day, I suggested that one specific form cultural renewal could take was to work to reattach people to the pleasures and benefits of reading. The statistics documenting the decline in reading habits presented by two National Endowment for the Arts studies (covered by our Journal) and the research about the effects of online skimming and multitasking on our ability to concentrate on long-form prose and poetry (as discussed by Nicholas Carr, Maggie Jackson, and others) were surely evidence of a cultural condition in need of thoughtful renovation.

One of the other participants—a seminary president, as it happens—suggested that if people weren’t reading as much, then we needed to train our leaders to produce more seven-minute YouTube videos. This seemed to me to miss the point of cultural renewal, which must surely include the demonstration of better patterns of living, not just inserting our message (or our brand) into disordered lives. I majored in film studies as an undergraduate, and have written and lectured frequently about cinematic syntax, grammar, and language. I know that books do something that video can’t. Substituting snappy videos for the disciplines of the printed word did not look like a pursuit of renewal, but like an effort to maintain influence in the midst of decay. In fact it amounted to blessing a condition that should be decried and resisted.

This sort of approach seems very common among Christian leaders. What secular critics are willing to see as cultural decline, many Christian leaders identify as an encouraging new ministry opportunity. Rather than working to keep the ship from sinking, they rush to make sure they will command some of the lifeboats, or distribute life-jackets decorated with Bible verses. True, sometimes being delivered from drowning is all we can hope for. But let’s not confuse search-and-rescue efforts with the maintenance of a robust and seaworthy fleet.