theo|digital

“The most integral and involving time sense imaginable is that expressed in the Chinese and Japanese cultures. Until the coming of the missionaries in the seventeenth century, and the introduction of mechanical clocks, the Chinese and Japanese had for thousands of years measured time by graduations of incense. Not only the hours and the days, but the seasons and zodiacal signs were simultaneously indicated by a succession of carefully ordered scents.”

“In the Renaissance the clock combined with the uniform respectability of the new typography to extend the power of social organization almost to a national scale. By the 19th century it had provided a technology of cohesion that was inseparable from industry and transport, enabling an entire metropolis to act almost as an automation. Now in the electric age of decentralized power and information we begin to chafe under the uniformity of clock-time. In this age of space-time we seek multiplicity, rather than repeatability, of rhythms. This is the difference between marching soldiers and ballet.”

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man : Critical Edition

My friend Ben recently pointed out David Brooks Op-Ed in the NYTimes explaining the postmodern’s instinctive reaction to hype.  Plus, he says “organic skate sneakers.”  Wonderful.

In order to cement your status in the cultural elite, you want to be already sick of everything no one else has even heard of.

Read the rest…

Meanwhile, I’ve just left the high country, pausing just long enough to watch a Rockies game at Coors Field (while successfully avoiding actual Coors), and then head hurtling down (cf.  hurdling down or even hurling down) toward the sticky Midwest at speeds to thrill the heart.  Enroute, I visited both my old friend John, my other friend John, and my friends Eric and Amanda.  Sweet.

On theological studies…

“Scriptural scholars of both the Old and New Testaments frequently say that while their treatment must be linear, the subject is not. The subject treats of the relations between God and man, and between God and the world, and of the relationship between man and his neighbor – all these subsist together, and act and react upon one another at the same time.
The Hebrew and Eastern mode of though tackles problem and resolution, at the outset of a discussion, in a way typical of oral societies in general. The entire message is then traced and retraced, again and again, on the rounds of a concentric spiral… one can stop anywhere after the first few sentences and have the full message, if one is prepared to “dig” it.” p43

In the context of the cold war…

Is a severe penalty the best deterrent to serious crime? With regard to the bomb and the cold war, is the threat of massive retaliation the most effective means to peace? Is it not evident in every human situation that is pushed to a point of saturation that some precipitation occurs?… It is obvious that numbness is the result of any prolonged terror. The price of eternal vigilance is indifference.” p48

~ Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man : Critical Edition

My random information bucket of things I found interesting today:

• Toyota will start selling a Prius hybrid with built in solar panels on the roof that power the air-conditioning. Only in Japan, though.
• A political story from Australia about a child posing nude for a magazine cover highlights the idea that any kind of standard societal sexual morality is out the window as soon as some of the older generations die. I’ve been predicting for a number of years that things like the legal age of consent will drop much lower, and acceptance of some child p-rnography will become mainstream. This isn’t scary as much as sad, and I believe rather inevitable. But Christians work best as as compassionate counter-cultural agents, anyway.
• Who knew that Mark Zuckerberg‘s college roommate Chris Hughes is the social architect behind Barak Obama’s social networking website: my.barackobama.org? It has almost 1 million members. The NY Times did a story.
• Related: Rolling Stone just published a bio of Zuckerberg during his Harvard-dorm days (not that long ago) that paints him as a calculating jerk who stole the Facebook idea from other students. Whether or not he’s a jerk, he’s clearly a genius programmer. Obama’s Chris Hughes wasn’t mentioned as one of the belligerents.
• Meanwhile, employees of Google are, interestingly, big contributers to Obama’s campaign. Though David Brooks points out that Obama’s fundraising, while significant with small donors, is hardly the grass-roots-only system that Obama’s campaign implies.
• Today’s younger college faculty are more likely to politically moderate than politically liberal.
• The Anglican church has now had the closest thing to a real split between conservatives and liberals. The former met in Jerusalem for GAFCON (Global Anglican Future Conference) and drew up fourteen evangelically-worded statements of orthodoxy. Suprisingly, liberal archbishop of Cantebury Rowan Williams was “positive and encouraging.”

(I’m reading through the Pew Religious Landscape Survey. You can read my other posts on it as well.)

Some data on religious traditions that are passed on well (or not so well).

The religious traditions most heavily comprised of people who have switched affiliation include the unaffiliated [they're incorporating this as a category], Buddhists, Jehovah Witnesses, members of “other faiths” category (e.g. Unitarians, members of New Age groups and members of Native American religions) and members of the “other Christian” tradition (including metaphysical Christians). (p27)
This definitely seems to reflect that American propensity to seek something out very different as a self-defining element to replace the original religious category. It obviously also speaks to something about how religious traditions as passed down in families. Like, why do kids with parents who are Jehovah’s Witness rarely follow them?

Well, last month I mentioned the release of the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey released by one of the Washington DC’s Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. It’s one of the most extensive of its kind in long time—they did in-depth interviews with 35,000 people. The initial report is 138 pages.

Because I’ve only been having short periods of time to look through it (the entire report is available online, but I actually killed some trees so I could mark it up), I’ve decided to start dropping in quotes and numbers as I find them interesting.

“Constant movement characterizes the American religious marketplace as every major religious group is simultaneously gaining and losing adherents. Those that are growing as a result of religious change are simply gaining new members at a faster rate than they are losing members.” (p7)
“constant movement” sounds right.
Interesting they chose to use the marketplace metaphor.


“Despite predictions that the United States would follow Europe’s path toward widespread secularization, the US population remains highly religious in its beliefs and practices…” (p1)
I wonder – is this still coming? How many years do we tend to lag behind them culturally? Or are there factors that really make us very different?

“People moving into the ‘unaffiliated’ category outnumber those moving out of ‘unaffiliated’ group by more than a three-to-one margin.” (p7)

Obama’s speech Tuesday on race is the most straightforward speech I’ve ever heard from a public official. One small portion on his controversial pastor:

Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. …He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

And it gets wider, discussing white backlash to affirmative action, and noting that the thing that would help him more politically would be to let this fade. Read the fulltext for faster reading (it’s the best about 50-60% of the way through). But you can watch at least part of it to get the tone (although he’s a bit bound to the teleprompter in the first eight minutes).

Quick few more links: it’s being compared to Kennedy’s speech on being a Catholic, Time magazine compiles academic reactions, web traffic about the speech (ironically) is soaring, Sean Hannity’s discussion boards are outrageous as usual (Obama is still a muslim), and John Kass even decided it was for real.

“Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing… What Orwell feared was those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one…

In 1984, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”

~ Neil Postman, writing in his forward to Amusing Ourselves to Death, an old favorite that I finally just bought to put in the permanent shelves (go Amazon impulse buy). This guy wrote in 1985, and still has a lot of power. Love it. So good. Love it. Yep.

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Now playing: Sigur Rós – Ágætis Byrjun
via FoxyTunes

Okay, after a short hiatus, back to further thoughts on Christians and culture. (ha. eventually we may get back to our catalyst thought – Christian reaction to the Golden Compass).

I think I’ll dive forward into a couple more thinkers on this, then come back for more reflection later. Let’s hit current Anabaptist thought. I’m a newcomer to this tradition (sometimes referred to as the “reformation left”) which spawned current Mennonites, Brethren, etc. My group GCM has some theological relationship to this group (whether they know it or not) because of their emphasis on “New Testament Christianity”

The Anabaptist theology of culture can be in part represented by John Howard Yoder (1927-1997) and Duane Friesen. Yoder would make the initial point that culture cannot be seen monolithically, as Niebuhr does in his classic typologies of Christ and Culture. Instead, we must understand culture as something all people already are embedded in, or possess (e.g. the fish). The key is discernment in cultural practices.

Christians living in the world must interpret and transform culture. To interpret culture is to look at Jesus. Jesus appeared in a specific Jewish culture in time and space, and his actions in that culture are our example, our “root metaphor” for understanding how we relate to our culture (that is to say – the principles are transcultural). To live out that understanding in our culture, then, is to transform culture.

This, according to Duane Friesen, is achieved by focal practices in community. These practices are concrete ways of speaking about transforming culture (cf. Neibuhr’s type of Christ transforming culture, an idea he unhelpfully leaves in the abstract). Ritual is one category of focal practice. For instance, Christians practicing the ritual of baptism, or keeping the Sabbath day. But social practices are essential as well and examples include: sharing meals, practicing sacrificial service for each other, practicing hospitality to the stranger.

Three roles we take in relating to culture: as artists – seeking for beauty we see in culture, as citizens – seeking for the common good, as philosophers – seeking wisdom in culture. The Anabaptist principle that ties it together is from Jer. 29, “seek the shalom (peace/wholeness/health) of the city.” This is the model of cultural engagement that doesn’t allow for separation (as Anabaptists have been accused of believing), but instead focuses on dual citizenship, guided by the principles of God’s kingdom and living them out for the good of our world hear and now.

We’ll have to get to dual citizenship next, I guess.

One of my newer friends is Josh W, the slightly older brother-person to my good friend Matt. Since he (and Matt) both live two hours from me in Champaign, about the best we got is idea exchange, and I’m liking Josh’s thoughts on some of our culture discussion. Having done some studies in theology from a Catholic perspective, it’s a different voice. So Josh, I’m gonna have a go at a few of your most recent comments.

–
Here’s what strikes me as odd about these characterizations – none of them talk about culture as it relates to evangelization.
You catch me off-guard on your observation here. Evangelism is not the first thing I think of in the starting conversation about Christianity and culture.

Maybe first, I’m still thinking of culture in a pretty wide sense. Driving a Japanese-made car. Blue toothbrushes. Required volleyball games during high school P.E. class. Cheerios. Walking on the right side of the sidewalk. Socks. Shaking hands. Smoking or non?

In other words, I want to think of culture first like fish to water – invisible, ubiquitous, and necessary. This lets me emphasize what I have in common with all other humans. We are all fish. And we all swim in water.

To that extent, I think TM Moore isn’t that wrong when he says most Christians seems to fall into his “culturally indifferent” category. Not only have they not spent a serious amount of time pondering their culture, but they haven’t even thought about the category.

Many more conservative Christians *have* spent a more time thinking about how to react to certain pop art productions of culture – music and tv. This is small compared to the wider pie. We can have lots of good discussion here, but the point is, to discuss Christianity and culture might be to discuss immoral effects of economic systems or cultural understanding of sexuality before we get to Scrubs.

I’m way off your thoughts. Back to them.

So few observations (not in order):

Culture can be engaged to evangelize non-believers.
One, is to notice you start with the Christian/non-Christian divide. I hardly deny its reality (I’m a missionary!), but I’d want to begin with same-ness before walking toward difference.


We celebrate liturgical seasons like Advent and Lent, Christmas and Easter… things like the rosary, litanies, etc.)
Second, you speak of Christian ritual which some Christians (particularly the liturgical and Catholic traditions) celebrate. Isn’t this Christian culture? By that I mean, it isn’t the natural culture of the girl working at Best Buy today – it’s very foreign to her. Popular American culture and liturgical church culture seems about as far apart as Iranian culture and sushi. Two different cultures colliding or perhaps, if they attend a “inter-cultural function” – in some awkward dialogue. I guess when I’m speaking of how Christians should engage culture, I’m not thinking of how a Christian culture engages a secular culture. This is also to start with both difference and establishment.

(Unless we are making an assumption that general culture and Christian culture are actually the same or similar, but that’s Christendom, and I assume we’re agreed that the world of the Holy Roman Empire is not today.)

But I think what’s most interesting is the idea of using culture as a tool. Culture can be used or engaged in order to accomplish a goal. Back to our fish/water analogy. How does that work?

These were random thoughts. I’m sure Josh will have more. Hopefully next I’ll get to John Howard Yoder and Duane Friesen.