Andy Crouch feels uncomfortable when Christians talk about transforming culture or making an impact on society. But he strongly believes churches should do far more to encourage Christians to make culture — right where they live.
“I'm all for cultural transformation — in fact, I believe it's a very good phrase for what God seeks to do in every human culture. But transformation is surely out of the reach of any human being's activity or agency. It really is something only God can do in any lasting and deep way,” said Crouch, an author and documentary filmmaker.
“People who study culture carefully always come away impressed by how much more culture has transformed and shaped us than we will ever transform or shape it. Still, beginning with our original creation and call in the garden [of Eden], we human beings have always been culture makers. We cultivate and create in our specific cultural contexts, and in those local places we can do a lot of wonderful things. But transformation is not up to us; it's up to God, which is actually tremendously freeing.”
Crouch, editorial director for the Christian Vision Project at Christianity Today International, has written a book on the subject — Culture Making: Recovering our Creative Calling — due for release by InterVarsity Press this summer.
When it comes to creativity, Christians have made their mark in literature of all kinds — from popular fiction to acclaimed work such as Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Gilead, he said.
“Music is the other place where Christians have been successfully offering up innovative cultural goods for at least a generation now,” he added. From American Idol contestants singing contemporary Christian music selections to classically trained musicians performing works by Christian composers such as John Tavener and James MacMillan, Christian influence permeates music, he noted.
“We've always been a people of the word, so it makes sense that there would be a strong Christian presence in literature. We value music in worship, so Christians have done well in that area,” Crouch said. “Where we have not been represented as much are in areas the church has either avoided or viewed with suspicion — film, dance and the visual arts.”
In part, he sees the plethora of Christian musicians compared to the dearth of Christian graphic artists as a simple matter of supply and demand. “With the decline of public arts and music education, the church has become the last significant reservoir of amateur expression in music. It's the place where young musicians are given a chance to develop,” Crouch said.
While nearly all churches encourage musical involvement because it's an essential part of worship, churches often fail to encourage other creative expressions because they are not viewed as useful, he added, asking, “Do we only value what the church needs?”
But some Christian groups have developed to nurture aspiring artists. The Act One program trains screenwriters and producers in Hollywood, and the New York Center for Arts and Media Studies trains young artists in Manhattan, Crouch noted.
“The visual art world is stunningly insular and hostile to professions of faith, but Christians are doing serious, good work and will be better represented there in years to come,” he said. “It just takes time.”
Christians have made inroads into the movie industry but not much in television for one simple reason, Crouch noted — market economics.
“One advantage movies have over television is they can be much more narrowly targeted, and they are driven by consumer demand without the intermediation of advertisers,” he said. “So, movies tend to be produced successfully for much tighter niches than TV — and Christian consumers are certainly a large enough niche to be of interest to Hollywood.”
Crouch firmly rejects the idea Christians have to break through into high-impact major media markets in order to influence culture in a big way.
“I really resist the word ‘impact.' Impact is high-energy and almost by definition short-lived. And human cultures are designed to resist impact — to change only slowly and organically,” he said.
“I also resist the idea that we should let the world define for us what is big. Certainly, some Christians are called to live and work in major media markets or in various kinds of cultural epicenters. … But to seek to have an impact there is almost always not only to miss our Christian calling, but to distort our cultural calling as well.
“The great good news of God's redemptive story is that we all can be part of it, in whatever location we are called to be. The question of where we are called to make culture is a matter of just that — calling, not of strategy for cultural impact. And all of us are called to cultivate and create somewhere.”