Instamatic Theology

Still comparing cultural interpretation in Culture Making and Everyday Theology. We’re now on content…

Content is what the cultural item is trying to communicate and/or do. Roughly we could think of this as making a proposal about how the world should be (Crouch’s third question) or about what it all means. Very likely this won’t be through propositional statements, but by showing or implying. Vanhoozer puts it this way:

cultural texts convey their propositions — their proposals about what it means to be human — not by offering explicit arguments but rather by displaying them in concrete forms.

I think Everyday Theology is the stronger of the two on this point. Remember it is concerned with interpretation, which obviously has a big content focus. Following Vanhoozer then we can say that to get a rounded view of the content we need to look at both what it is trying to do (in Vanhoozers terms I think this is roughly the illocution) and how it is doing it (the locution?).

The ‘how’ is the surface content or the medium, etc. It’s not really covered directly by Crouch’s questions; but perhaps it comes out in the questions that ask what a ‘cultural artefact’ makes possible/impossible/etc. — the ‘how’ comes out in the way that the ‘artefact’ alters the world around us. Perhaps the medium is (in some ways) the change that results.

When you are thinking in terms of ‘cultural texts’ there is room to think more widely (although, I think change-as-medium is a good thing to keep in mind). Here we can bring in narrative points, visual aspects, genre-conventions, as well as the details of the story, etc.. Again, considering the ‘how’ is an important part of listening, to ensure we truly hear what is being said. This reminds me of a quote from Bart Gavigan: “The problem with Christians is that they love theme more than story.” We must be careful not to jump too soon to the ‘message’ before hearing the story.

The ‘what’ is (eventually) the point that we might naturally run to first. What is this item trying to say? We can link this in with a number of our proposed questions/considerations. Within this we can think Vanhoozer’s questions: what is the world of the text? — what is being displayed — and what is the world in front of the text? — what is being proposed about/for your world. As we said, this is related to Crouch’s question asking what is the artefact’s assumption about how the world should be? Or alternatively, What new sense does
it seek to add to a world that often seems chaotic and senseless? 

Let’s try an example to avoid getting bogged down. What is the ‘content’ of cars (to take an example off the top of my head)?

The ‘how’? Well, it’s an artefact, so it is proposes/displays/does by being a functional object, by being something that can be used in a particular way. More specifically by being a technological object. And by changing what we can do, our abilities, the parameters of our world. 

The ‘what’? I guess we could start by saying it displays a world where constraints can be overcome by technology. From a specifically Christian point of view, it displays a world where we are given the ability and flexibility to alter things; a world where resources are placed at our disposal. It proposes a world where rapid travel is a virtue, where distances should not be constraining, where people should not be tied to a particular locality, and (in comparison with public transport) where individuals have only a limited reliance on others in society or societal structures, etc., etc.

Well, that’s a start. By no means a full view, but I guess that gives the idea…

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OK, so we’re trying to synthesise Culture Making and Everyday Theology by thinking of cultural items in terms of Context, Content and Consequences; the question  is where do we put the different questions/considerations of each book?

Context is really what Vanhoozer calls ‘the world behind the text’. It consists of the assumptions and worldviews of the author(s), as well as things that are happening around at the time, the characteristics of the medium and the personal experiences of the author. It is what shapes the reason and character of the item/work/artefact.

Of course, we can also pull in Crouch’s first question here, which helpfully focusses us on one particular aspect of this — What is assumed about the way the world is? Perhaps, we can also see half of the second question: What is assumed about the way the world should be? or as Crouch develops this: What vision of the future animated its creators?  As a background to creating it is likely that a ‘culture agent’ will have some assumption of how things should be and this will filter through to what they create and say.

I guess it is easy to jump straight to analysing the message, but in many cases we don’t understand correctly unless we listen to the context first. We need to slow down and understand what is going on around before we decide what is being proposed.

As a really simple example, think of genre films (and, as Mark Kermode reminds us, there is nothing wrong with genre films): If you don’t understand the conventions of a genre, how are you going to understand the message? The message of a science fiction film may not be that we should expect life from other worlds to visit soon, even if that is what appears on the surface. The message comes in how the key components of the genre are handled or used.

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Two current books, Everyday Theology (Kevin Vanhoozer et al) and the up-coming Culture Making (Andy Crouch) both start with approaches to understanding or reading culture. I thought it would be interesting to attempt a synthesis of the two. Foolhardy, perhaps, but let’s try.

While trying this, it’s important to keep in mind that these two books have different models in mind. Vanhoozer is thinking ‘interpretation’, Crouch is thinking ‘making’. Both have similary goals: understanding as an aid to being a faithful ‘cultural agent’ and I think the two approachescan be complementary in many ways. 

Before we try for full-on synthesis, here is a brief overview of the approach to understanding that each take…

Everyday Theology brings in two basic grids for thinking about culture. The first is looks at culture items as ‘texts’. With this in mind, we can consider the world behind the text (what is the context), the world of the text (what is displayed by the text) and the world in front of the text (what is the proposal for your world). 

The second brings in speech-act ideas. In this case we can think of the locution (roughly, what is the content? For example, ‘a story about a wolf & a girl who likes wearing red’), the illocution (what are the speakers doing in speaking?, e.g. ‘suggesting that talking to strangers may lead to unfortunate consequences’), and the perlocution (what is the result of the speech?, e.g. ‘children become more wary of talking to strangers’)

Culture Making has a more straight-forward set of questions. It is focussed on culture as artefacts and the questions reflect this. So, Crouch asks ‘What is assumed about the way the world is?’, ‘What is assumed (or proposed) about the way the world should be?’, ‘What is made possible by this artefact?’, ‘What is made impossible?’, ‘What new forms of culture are made in response to the artefact?’ 

I wonder if we can synthesise these by thinking along three lines: Context, Content and Consequences (you see what I did there? It should be noted that in doing this, we’re almost certain to lose something in translation (especially for Vanhoozer’s ideas), but I think it helps as a framework to start with. At least, for me to collect my thoughts. Maybe for others too.

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What does it mean to be not just culturally aware but culturally responsible? Not just culture consumers or even just culture critics, but culture makers? Our newly regained cultural awareness means that we are not satisfied, as earlier generations might have been, with separating our faith from our “worldly” activities. We want our lives—our whole lives—to matter for the gospel. But what exactly does that mean?

Absolutely. If there has been one theme in my thinking in, well, living memory, it is: how do we integrate what we believe into our whole lives? Really. Not just by being nice people, but in our day-to-day and its products.

What we most have to learn about being creators of culture is the very thing we human beings find hardest to learn: everything about our calling, from start to finish, is a gift. What is most needed in our time are Christians who are deeply serious about cultivating and creating but who wear that seriousness lightly—who are not desperately trying to change the world but who also wake up every morning eager to create.

I like this being serious and wearing it lightly. How to get the balance?! Or, for me, how to stop being desperately serious and actually act I’m keen to see what he does with this. My current hunch is to focus on the theme that God calls into being the new creation and we work to anticipate this. Consequently, we are not under pressure to change things ourselves, but we have the freedom to act appropriately. 

How to move this from theory to practice is, of course, the challenge… 

I hope churches will read this book and take the risky path of celebrating their members who do not go into “full-time Christian service” but who serve Christ full time in their own arena of culture.

I hope that those with evident cultural power will read this book and discover God’s purpose for their power; I hope that those who feel small and neglected in the world will discover that God has something great for them to do, that they are not forgotten but are at the very center of his plan, the heroes of his surprise ending.

The first bit here picks up on something that has been running around my mind a lot lately. We believe that God works in all jobs and callings, but we have a tendency in church to focus on the ones we class as ‘spiritual’. I want to understand how we can adjust our imaginations in this. To help us truly believe what we say we believe.

The second paragraph is I think a key point. It’s OK for us to talk culture, even culture-making, but few of us are in ‘cultural power’. Unless we can connect with everyone, it feels that we are somehow missing the point. I don’t think the body of Christ is intended to imply a mass supporting a specialised active elite — whether that is a spiritual elite or a cultural one. We need a perspective of New Creation/God’s Kingdom that engages truly everyone.

Very interested to see where this heads…

Andy Crouch has a new book imminent called ‘Culture Making’. Looks very interesting — a call to engage in culture by making it, not just critiquing it. (Obviously this is very similar to some of the sentiments scribbled here, e.g. this.) Should be worth a look.

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