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Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling

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Someone once told me that our twenties are about figuring out who we are, and our thirties are about figuring out what we should be doing with our lives. I'd say that's about right, in my own limited experience. A mid-career switch from a steady and well-paid job I was good at to a couple of iterations of a new vocation I'm not sure I'm good enough at--this has been the story of my life in my thirties, and I've sometimes gotten pretty lost in all of it. The Church's varied, and usually unsolicited, opinions on these matters often don't help at all.

"Culture Making" offers sharp insight into the issue of vocation, delivered methodically, yet beguilingly, via elegant and sometimes beautiful prose. Andy Crouch sets the scene and tells the story of culture, then rapidly sweeps the reader into this story, finishing with a heart-stopping, imagination-grabbing, challenge to go and make something of the world.

After defining the terms--culture is what we make of the world, creating new culture is the only way to change culture (although gestures of condemnation, critique, copying and consumption may certainly have validity)--Crouch filters the biblical story from Genesis to Revelation through the lens of culture, then addresses our role as co-creators and cultivators with God in this world and the next (it's filled with co-created cultural goods that pass what I call the `new Jerusalem test', and the idea takes my breath away). While all three sections of the book are tightly integrated, it is this third section, entitled "Calling", that really sings.

Crouch's broad definition of culture making--the introduction of any cultural good--is also liberating for those of us with a narrow view of vocation. Essentially--we can, and must, be creative in every area of our life, because we bear the image of our creator. This is must-read stuff, and not just for artists (although I think artists will really sink their teeth into this one). It's food for thought for any Christian wishing to make a meaningful contribution to their world. It certainly has contributed deeply to my own thinking about vocation.

In a political, religious, and journalistic climate focused on culture "wars" and "clashes," I was leery of what another Christian book on culture might have to say. I was delighted to see the issue framed entirely outside the scope of those debates. Instead, this book was about creating culture.

It was smart, challenging, and most of all very humane. I couldn't stop thinking about it and talking about it long after I finished reading. For Christians who see their role as cultural critics, Andy's book provides a new framework for understanding our role as culture makers. For non-Christians, the book provides a fresh perspective on the grace that sustains and transforms our desires to build, create, and restore. Can't recommend it enough.

This is a must-read book for those of us who are tired of talking and ready for action. Crouch works through the story of humans as presented in the Bible to show God's work in developing human culture, whether it be words, omelets, art, government, or relationships.

Crouch provides an expanded definition of culture - beyond art, media, and politics - and calls Christians to be producers, not just critics, in order to create and promote good in society. He writes with discernment, providing context for the ways the American church has historically responded to culture (condemning, critiquing, copying, and consuming) and giving a vision of the way things could be.

Let's reclaim the culture for Christ!
We need to transform the culture!
Let's redeem the culture!
We should resist the culture!

What do these phrases really mean?
What do we mean by "culture" when we talk about transforming it?
Is it our Christian calling to redeem "culture?"

Andy Crouch's new book Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (IVP, 2008) is a landmark work that will create a new culture of its own within evangelicalism. Crouch points out the areas where evangelical thinking about culture-making has been counterproductive, and he charts a new path - one that would have evangelicals understand culture in more tangible ways.

Crouch points out the fallacious ways in which we conceive of "culture." Christians too often think simplistically about "culture" - as if it were some nebulous, overarching thought system in our world. Crouch believes we are wrong to talk of "culture" in this way. Instead, we must start thinking of culture as specific cultural goods (29).

Culture is what human beings make of the world. And these things we make eventually affect the world we live in. We cannot withdraw or escape culture because it is what we were made to do (36).

Analyzing culture does not substitute for the creation of real cultural goods (64). "The only way to change culture is to create more of it," Crouch says (67).

Crouch sees much of evangelicalism's desire to "engage the culture" as well-intentioned but often misguided. We tend to take certain, appropriate gestures toward cultural artifacts and make them postures - our position towards all cultural artifacts. Crouch points out several ways that Christians relate to "culture:" (78-98)

Condemning
Critiquing
Copying
Consuming.

Each of these may be appropriate positions to take toward certain cultural items. After all, there is nothing we can do with pornography except condemn it. There is also a place for strong critique of culture. Likewise, there are times when copying culture is appropriate. And of course, we can consume culture without any guilt at all when such action is glorifying to God.

But Crouch warns us against making these appropriate gestures into postures. When we turn gestures into postures, we assume a certain outlook regarding all culture. Crouch sets forth a different model. Instead of reacting to culture as it is, Christians should concentrate on creating and cultivating culture as we want it to be. We are to be artists and gardeners - creators and cultivators of cultural goods.

Crouch describes concrete ways that we can be creators of culture. He shows us how cultural artifacts change the culture. (There is a fascinating section on the difference between the river and the highway.)

Readers will discover that an emphasis on humility pervades the book. Crouch warns against thinking that we can change the world.

"Changing the world sounds grand, until you consider how poorly we do even at changing our own little lives... Indeed, I sometimes wonder if breathless rhetoric about changing the world is actually about changing the subject - from our own fitfully suppressed awareness that we did not ask to be brought into this world, have only vaguely succeeded at figuring it out, and will end our days in radical dependence on something or someone other than ourselves. Beware of world changers, they have not yet learned the true meaning of sin (200)."

Crouch bases his thoughts on culture-making within the creation narrative and the gospel story of redemption. He dodges the question of historicity of the creation accounts (120) by talking about the importance of the story, not just the historical details. (I find this evasion most peculiar, because he treats the biblical text as fully accurate throughout his book.)

Crouch is right to show that heaven too will have a culture. "Culture is the furniture of heaven. (170)" This leads us to the thought-provoking question about our cultural artifacts: Can we imagine this making it into the new Jerusalem?

Crouch critiques the emphasis that "worldview thinking" places upon analysis and thought. He believes we need less critics of cultural goods and more creators of cultural goods. But considering the fact that a great number of Christians simply consume culture without critically thinking about the messages of these goods convey, I believe we could use more creators and critics of cultural goods. It is true that too much analysis can keep us from purely "enjoying" art, but I'm not convinced that enjoyment and thinking critically are necessarily opposed to one another. I'm also concerned that some evangelicals might take these words from Culture Making as a free pass to watch or listen to whatever they want and to dismiss the idea of worldview-critique.

What I love most about Culture Making is the theme of hope. Crouch believes we can start creating culture in small spheres (our family, for example). He points out the importance of small groups (three, twelve, 120). Culture is not always made by the large crowd. We can all get busy fulfilling the creation mandate to create and cultivate.

Culture Making is filled with grace. We recognize that our ability to create or cultivate culture is rooted in God's grace. "Where are we called to create culture? At the intersection of grace and cross." (262)

Crouch's conclusion?

"So do you want to make culture? Find a community, a small group who can lovingly fuel your dreams and puncture your illusions. Find friends and form a family who are willing to see grace at work in one another's lives, who can discern together which gifts and which crosses each has been called to bear. Find people who have a holy respect for power and a holy willingness to spend their power alongside the powerless. Find some partners in the wild and wonderful world beyond church doors. And then, together, make something of the world." (263)

Amen. Now, let's get busy!

Andy Crouch's book is the best I've read on culture and Christian responsibility. He is a gentle but trenchant critic of the church's current and past failures, a smart celebrant of the church's successes, and best of all, a trustworthy guide toward a productive future of culture making.

Truth be told, I sort of expected all that, and was glad to have my expectations met. But I was surprised by what I see as the book's core accomplishment, which is a re-reading of the Bible that reveals the centrality of the concept of "culture." The book powerfully reorients us, not only in terms of our thinking about culture, but also our way of interacting with and living according to scripture. "Culture Making" deserves to be a watershed moment for Christian witness, and I hope it is.

"Culture" is a word often used but rarely understood. To some it connotes art, music, and fine dining. To others, it expresses a unique ethnic or national heritage. For some, it is the battleground on which the "culture wars" are fought.

Andy Crouch would have us understand "culture" as including all of these, but so much more. In Culture Making, we come to see culture as "the name for our relentless, restless human effort to take the world as it's given to us and make something else". As Christians who believe that the universe was created and is ruled by a sovereign God who designed man in His own image, this has huge implications. If we are to image our Creator, then we must exercise our capacity for creativity. God has given us the world and charged us to "work and keep it" (Genesis 2:15), which we may see as our cultural mandate.

Crouch's book is broken into three parts, labeled Culture, Gospel, and Calling. In Part 1, he gives instructions on how first of all to diagnose the importance and impact of a given cultural artifact (which can be anything from languages to omelets to iPods). He asks five questions to accomplish this: (1) What does this cultural artifact assume about the way the world is? (2) What does this cultural artifact assume about the way the world should be? (3) What does this cultural artifact make possible? (4) What does this cultural artifact make impossible (or at least very difficult)? (5) What new forms of culture are created in response to this artifact?

For examples of how these questions are asked and answered, check out the author's blog, Culture-Making.com, which includes a weekly "Five Questions" post. Definitely recommended!

Our task as creative imagers of God requires much more than mere diagnosis, however. We must have a robust understanding of what culture is and how it changes (which the author provides), and then ascertain our role in culture making.

For me, by far the most helpful chapter in the book was called "Gestures and Postures", which examined four primary ways in which Christians have traditionally engaged culture: Condemning, Critiquing, Copying, and Consuming. Each of these he calls "gestures", saying that each is an appropriate response to culture in certain situations. He warns, however, against adopting a "posture" of condemnation, critique, copying, or consumption, in which we engage ALL culture with the same response. This has been the error made by most Christians throughout history.

Instead, Crouch suggests that the biblical model of "good postures" are those of Creation and Cultivation. These "postures of freedom" allow Christians to respond appropriately in every situation, using the four gestures listed above as well as pro-actively creating new culture and cultivating existing culture.

Part 2 looks at how creation and cultivation are modeled for us in the Bible, by Old and New Testament saints as well as by God himself. While at times I believe Crouch overstates his case, I greatly enjoyed the tour through Scripture presented from a perspective I've never considered before. Even in the places where his interpretation of Scripture is different from mine, or, more commonly, ambiguous (for instance, Crouch seems to vacillate between viewing the Genesis account of creation as a historical record and as a poetic, non-historical story), my understanding of Scripture was strengthened through approaching it in a different light.

Part 3 digs into the practical application of this understanding of culture. The first chapter in this section is provocatively titled "Why We Can't Change the World". Crouch's point is not that we are incapable of making any difference in the world, but that individually we are incapable of producing cultural artifacts that will "change the horizons of the possible" for everyone, everywhere. Instead, he says, we ought to focus on making positive changes within our own world; having a good impact within whatever sphere of influence we may have.

The only way culture is changed on a large scale is through community. Believers in particular are to work cooperatively to create and cultivate culture that will benefit the world. Crouch encourages us to see where God is working, and to get involved. The pattern he sees in the Bible and throughout church history is one of God using the powerful alongside the powerless. Though power is often abused, it is actually a good gift of God that is meant to be used to aid those who do not have power... though every person has some level of power within a certain context. It is only by the cooperative efforts of believers that see every human as an image-bearer of God and therefore a potential creative culture-maker that the church and individual Christians can fulfill their cultural mandate to exercise dominion over the world.

Though there are many points of contention where I would likely disagree with Crouch's interpretation of Scripture, these are relatively small concerns compared to the benefit of many of the practical and theoretical suggestions in this book. As the author says, "the pursuit of a common good requires working in common with people who will not agree with us on every point." I am more than willing to work with Crouch and others like him in order to help all Christians come to a better understanding of our mandate -and our potential - to make a real difference in our world (even as we await the arrival of God's eternal and perfect kingdom) through culture making.

This is a book you should read.

Yep, this is another five-star review of Andy Crouch's remarkable work. I simply can't help it.

"Culture Making" is excellent. It's highly readable while also being intellectually challenging. It's thorough and comprehensive without feeling bulky or awkward. It's thoughtful, memorable, and actionable.

It's one of those rare (and timeless) books that is both something you should read and that you'll enjoy reading. From cover to cover, there's much for individual Christians and their communities to learn and apply.

Andy Crouch has taken the culture discussion among Christians and moved it ahead by a quantum leap. In fact, he makes the case that part of the problem is that we've had too much discussion, analysis and so-called engagement. He wisely invites us to be cultivators and creators of culture, to make something of the world.

Part of Crouch's gift is that he has read widely and well and he deftly shares this wisdom with his audience. His own thinking on this topic is profound, and rooted in real-life culture making. His writing is always clear, intelligent and full of new insights.

I used Culture Making in a class I was teaching on how Christians might interact with the movement known as the New Urbanism (a renewed vision of city planning). We found the book's five diagnostic questions to ask of any cultural artifact to be a gold mine. What does a suburban cul-de-sac assume about the way the world is? What new cultural goods are created as the result of a mixed-use neighborhood? Etc. I highly recommend this book.

We are created to create; in the manner of our Heavenly Father to bring forth order from disorder. We were also created to rule: to maintain order and separation; to "cultivate" in the garden. This is how Andy Crouch's excellent Culture Making: Recovering our Creative Calling begins.

Somewhat early in the book, Crouch argues that many Christians who say they want to transform cultures or worldviews subtly rewrite the problem they study into a fundamentally intellectual problem. Perhaps inevitably, people with strong analytical and philosophical gifts look at the evident problem of Christian disembodiment and propose not a profound program of embodiment but more thinking as the solution. And after we have done a lot more thinking, how exactly does the world change? Well, "then a miracle occurs." (Page 63) To "engage" the culture, Crouch says, becomes a near synonym for thinking about the culture (87).

I read several books the latter half of 2010 dealing with the broad issue of transforming cultures and worldviews, how to do this, and why some succeed and others fail in this regard (Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change, Paul Hiebert ; Communicating Christ Through Story and Song; Culture Shift: Culture Shift: Transforming Your Church from the Inside Out; Lewis, Cordeiro and Bird; Culture Shift: Engaging Current Issues With Timeless Truth, R. Albert Mohler; The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia--and How It Died, John Philip Jenkins). These books were thought-provoking in places, but most fell somewhat short in the area of mistaking analysis and commentary for application. So I could see the imbalance Crouch was pointing out in the above paragraph. Problem is, for the next 130 pages of his book, I kept wondering if this was not precisely the same pit Crouch had fallen into. Recycling biblical history to focus on culture and culture building (the exclusive focus of part II but also portions of parts I and III) was interesting in places but far from making the time investment I was putting into the book pay off for me.

Thankfully, the latter half of the third section of the book on Calling - particularly the chapters on Community and Grace as well as the postscript, made the effort worth it. To summarize, some main points include:

1. All Culture Making is Local: This means no matter how complex and extensive the cultural systems we may consider, the only way to change them is by way of a small group of innovative and creative people and a series of concentric circles of people the optimum size of which Crouch suggests are in the neighborhood of 3: 12: 120. We are, after all, according to Crouch, hardwired for villages. (p. 240-244).

2. All Culture Making is a Product of Grace: The way to genuine cultural creativity starts with the recognition that we woke up this morning in our right mind, with the use and activity of our limbs- and that every other creative capacity we have has likewise arrived as a gift we did not earn and to which we were not entitled. And once we are awake and thankful, our most important cultural contributions will very likely come from doing whatever keeps us precisely in the center of delight and surprise." (p. 252)

Where do you experience grace-divine multiplication that far exceeds your efforts? Grace is no exemption from the disciplines: we are called to be painstaking cultivators before we can become creators. Indeed, the disciplines that undergird any effort at culture making are an essential path to grace. Disciplines are private and invisible, preparing our hearts to handle the pressures of our work becoming public and visible (257). There may be no greater value to the disciplines (practicing scales if you are musician, learning languages if you are linguist, learning the basics of math or science if you are mathematician or scientist) than to regularly bring us to these moments of disillusionment with ourselves. Grace is for the poor in spirit, and the disciplines bring us, no matter our ascribed power or actual wealth, to keen awareness of our fundamental poverty. 258

I'll look back at this book again as I seek to synthesize what I gleaned from it in comparison with some of the other books mentioned above. In spite of its shortcomings, I'd recommend it as the best I've come across on the topic so far.

Andy Crouch has presented a true masterwork in Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling. Culture Making uses the idea of culture as a meta-narrative or meta-thesis to understanding God's Story and our calling and purpose in life. Culture is traced from the garden through God's Story and toward the hoped for New Jersusalem, the city where culture reaches its climax. Crouch interprets the whole Bible through the lens of culture, presenting a brilliantly constructed thesis that we are created to create within a larger culture.

Crouch, unlike most contemporary Christian theologians and leaders, approaches culture from a welcoming and not oppositional perspective, seeing cultures as a God given institutions that allow humans to live fully within God's ever-written Story. Culture should be embraced because only through culture and creativity does God's Story weave itself into our own lives and we leave our own fingerprints on society. Crouch presents an optimistic Christ-centered vision for the possibilities of culture:

"Christ and Culture does not do justice to culture at its best, which is to say culture in the hands of Christ: the sheer delight and joy that comes when Jesus takes the most basic stuff of the world, breaks it, blesses it and offers it back to us, made whole and made new....Only when culture gives us that kind of joy will it be fully transformed---and when it is transformed that way, in fulfillment of the whole sweep of the story from beginning to end, it will indeed be Christ who deserves the glory, honor and praise." (183)

Most Christian theologians and leaders are champions of not culture but worldview. Worldview is a response and not a catalyst---it is by definition diagnostic and detached from culture. It is static and passive. It critiques culture. It sees culture as something static and under a microscope. Andy Crouch argues that Christians must move beyond worldview critique because culture makers see culture as dynamic, something that needs to be cultivated, made, and changed. He writes,

"The danger of reducing culture to worldview is that we may miss the most distinctive thing about culture, which is that cultural goods have a life of their own. They reshape the world in unpredictable ways. The interstate highway system was certainly based on a worldview (assumptions about the way the world is and ought to be), and it did have many of the effects that its proponents predicted. But it also had other effects that were equally if not more significant, effects that were unpredicted and unpredictable. The interstate highway system was not just the result of worldview, it was the source of a new way of viewing the world." (63-64)

As participants in culture we are to always be diagnosing culture: ask how artifacts make sense of the world and add to (or take away from) our lives, then go and add more to our's and others' lives. Crouch calls us to be creative and to do instead of critique. More importantly, Christians are called into creativity that is not the stereotypical "artist locked in the studio only to resurface eight months later with a piece of art" type of creativity but instead takes a Trinitarian approach to culture and creativity as a work of community: "Christian culture making grows through networks, but it is not a matter of networking. It is a matter of community---a relatively small group of people whose common life is ordered by love" (248).

In my opinion, this is one of the best books I have read in a very long time and one of the most transformative. It has caused a huge paradigm shift in how I think and approach the world, something that reminds me of how I was transformed when N.T. Wright opened up the beauty of God's Story for the "now" to me. Crouch gives us the license to move beyond our opposite to culture and our bastardized forms of Christian copycat-isms and to be real, authentic culture makers in the beauty of Christian community.