O’Conner on the importance of belief
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Let me make no bones about it: I write from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. … I write with a solid belief in ll the Christian dogmas. I find that this in no way limits my freedom as a writer and that it increases rather than decreases my vision. It is popular to believe that in order to see clearly one must believe nothing. this may work well enough if you are observing cells under a microscope. It will not work if you are writing fiction. For the fiction writer to believe nothing is to see nothing. I don’t write to bring anybody a message, … this is not the purpose of a novelist; but the message I find in the life I see is a moral message.
Flannery O’Conner in The Habit of Being
respecting the medium
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I was recently re-reading the excellent It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God and came across these quotes from Theodore Prescott
While it is understandable that Christians think a Christian [artistic] expression may act redemptively in culture, this idea founders on our culture’s actual uses of art.
…
I’ve found that Christians tend to have expectations about what art can do, and what it will look like when Christians do it, that ignore the real terrain of art.
This has linked up with a few other thoughts running around my head — both about art and cultural participation more generally: When we are participating in culture we have respect they way that different media, etc. are actually used and work with that.
We have a tendency to see everything as a route for communicating what we believe. But, we have to be wary of coming with our ‘message’, forcing it on some unsuspecting cultural practice and expect the two to work together seamlessly. We have to respect the diversity that God has embedded in our cultural tendencies. We have to realise that not all cultural enterprises are appropriate as message-carriers. Even if they once were, this may no longer be the case in the current ‘terrain’.
As well as Prescott’s example of the visual arts, we might also consider the well-known observation that ‘politics is downstream from culture’. We have to understand what politics ‘is for’, what its limitations are, etc. and act appropriately.
Or perhaps better ‘serve appropriately’. Perhaps we need to look at cultural practices and ask ‘how can we best serve in this area of culture?’ It may be by presenting a clear message; it may be by working quietly for justice; it may be by being provocative.
To come back to our original example, Prescott suggests that
Our culture’s arts are very effective at mediating experiences of beauty, passion, mystery, intellectual engagement, or cultural challenge. But they are not capable of cultural redemption, unless society as a whole shares in the Christian longing for signs of the kingdom.
I think it’s fair to say that God is not divorced from beauty, passion, mystery, intellectual engagement or cultural challenge. So, this is not to suggest that we throw away what we believe, only that we see culture as it is and work appropriately.
Culture and questions (6): Tim Keller
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I found this quote today from Tim Keller, which fits nicely with what we’ve been saying here over the last few posts…
What is contextualization?
…
I propose the following definition: Contextualization is not ‘giving people what they want’ but rather it is giving God’s answers (which they may not want!) to questions they are asking and in forms that they can comprehend. “Contextualization” ‘incarnates’ the Christian faith in a particular culture.
(Taken from this talk & pdf; HT: reformissionary)
Keller makes the interesting addition that not only does the gospel answer a culture’s particular questions, but it also presents particular challenges to each culture.
Culture and questions (5): being relevant
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Growing out of recent posts, here’s my proposal:
True relevance depends on changing the questions we answer,
rather than changing the answers we already have.
It seems that there is an endless debate in the church over whether being relevant is a really bad thing or a absolutely vital thing. I want to suggest that we can attempt relevance in many ways and the consequences depend on the route. Look for relevance by changing the answers and you risk losing what you have without actually addressing the needs of those around. But do the hard work of listening to new questions and broadening the answers to meet the new needs and you will find new depth as well as serving the culture.
Crouch on what’s important
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This seemed obliquely relevant to recent posts…
We are not devoted to the preservation of a single culture, but to incarnation and transformation within every culture. So we need one another to help determine the “important” and “unimportant” features of any given culture.This will be an inherently multicultural exercise, because sorting out the important from the unimportant cannot happen in isolation or from a distance. … Only together can we discern the deeper significance of any given cultural practice, its redemptive possibilities, and its tempting distortions of the life that really is life.
– Andy Crouch
(from The Importance of Knowing What’s Unimportant)
Culture and questions (4): why and how
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I ended the last post alluding Tim Keller’s emphasis that Christians should be servants within culture and agents for cultural renewal — a ‘faithful presence within’. Perhaps we can link this with asking questions and with previous posts on reading/interpreting culture (which had in view Vanhoozer & co.’s Everyday Theology and Crouch’s Culture Making).
Why do we attempt to interpret culture? Not just for some intellectual rush. We interpret to understand the questions & the plot tensions. And we aim to understand these so that we can serve better, so that we can bring renewal where it is needed. So, that we come with answers to the questions that are being asked, not the questions we think should be asked.
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...