My friend Brenda Salter-McNeil recommended that I read Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling
This is a fabulous book. Regular readers of this blog know that I only post book reviews on this “main” page if I feel strongly about the book. And Culture Making certainly qualifies.
Crouch calls Christians to be culture makers. The complexities of culture are explored with broad but sensible descriptions, and then the recent impact the Church has had on our culture is unpacked. The result is not pretty, and Crouch takes us to task for that.
But the book is not overly negative. It’s not another Church deconstruction book. It is instead a compelling call to make a difference and offers ideas on how to do that. I love the line, “The only way to change culture is to create more of it.” The “culture wars” have created a culture of negativity. As have any number of other misguided endeavors. Crouch calls us to a more sensible approach.
Sometimes we see “culture” as something vague and hard to define. But Crouch points out that culture presents itself to our five senses — it is often a “thing” that can be touched, heard, smelled, seen, and tasted. And we can change the culture simply by creating more of it. Thus more movies that espouse values, more books that share wisdom, more university courses that embrace knowledge, more marriages that model virtue, and more leaders who model character. The list goes on, but you get the idea … creating a better culture is about creating better things.
On a personal level, Crouch pushes us to consider our motivations. I love the line, “Changing the world sounds grand until you consider how poorly we do at changing even our own little lives.” Crouch continues, “I sometimes wonder if our rhetoric about changing the world is more about changing the subject.” Touché.
Chapter 13 is my favorite because it touches on so many themes contained in this blog. Crouch explores the tension between the powerful and the powerless and how this creates a type of cultural tension. He goes on to state that bringing the powerful and powerless into partnership serves as a template for what God can do for our human culture. Quoting Isaiah 57:15,which is fast becoming my own life verse, he calls us to create culture that models something uniquely Kingdomlike. It’s about the interconnectedness between rich and poor, powerful and powerless, influencers and disenfranchised. As one who considers myself a cultural translator, I loved this section.
Here’s a line that echoes one of my early blog posts and is sure to get you to think: “For nearly all of us, becoming a celebrity is completely, categorically impossible. For all of us becoming a saint is completely, categorically possible. So why are so many trying to become a celebrity and so few trying to become a saint?” The book is filled with such lines, many of which will cause you to pause and reflect.
It’s a great book. Highly recommended. Thank you, Brenda!
