Read ill-legalism's interview with Dick Staub.
Also read ill-legalism's review of Revolution.
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Warriors or Ambassadors? A
Review of The Culturally Savvy Christian: A Manifesto
for Deepening Faith and Enriching Popular Culture in an
Age of Christianity-Lite
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Dick Staub, social commentator par excellence, has taken pen in hand to do what so many of the self-styled Culture Warriors have failed to accomplish. He has set a course that outlines in practical terms an appropriate Christian response to the challenges raised by our surrounding culture. Most Christian Culture Warriors content themselves with cursing the darkness while Staub ignites far more than a candle. His book is exactly what it purports to be - a manifesto. It is a call to action and one that has been long overdue. For those of you who are tired of hearing about The End of Christianity As We Know It with no concrete plan for how to remedy the situation, The Culturally Savvy Christian is just the book you have been waiting for. Staub divides his subject matter into three sections, each emphasizing a different element of his manifesto, “The culturally savvy Christian is serious about faith, savvy about faith and culture, and skilled in relating the two,” which he places as a frontpiece to each division. The first section, “Savvy,” treads familiar ground. Anyone who has read Neil Postman, Marie Winn, or Marshall McLuhan has already heard the criticism Staub levels at current culture. But he does not stop there. He continues with the same type of cultural analysis of the Church. Staub says the insipidity of the culture has so infected the church that we are now flooded with a “Christianity Lite” that threatens to relegate us to insignificance. And while the focus of the Culture Warriors rests on the surface of the problem, Staub’s gaze pierces through the superficiality and describes the underlying pathologies. Ever attached to alliteration, he describes three common responses to encroaching culture: · Cocooning from the culture - where we wall ourselves off from the surrounding culture and form our own safe subculture. · Combating the culture - where we assail the culture, trying to turn the clock back to the way things used to be. · Conforming to the culture - where we adopt the culture so deeply that we are virtually indistinguishable from our surroundings. Anyone who has read George Barna’s latest book, Revolution, is aware that this last approach has characterized Christianity so deeply that we lack any identifiable features that separate us from the surrounding culture. However, where Barna leaves off, Staub says, “I’ve never heard cultural observers describe contemporary Christianity as a profoundly spiritual movement offering deep union with a transcendent God or as the basis for a spiritually inspired, intelligent, and aesthetically rich cultural renewal.” (p. 43) Ouch. Happily, he doesn’t leave us wallowing in our grief and despair as so many do. He tells us to get serious. “Today, most of what we call spiritual searching is in fact a sham and a vain exercise better described as pseudo-searching,” he says. “We seek and do not find because we seek a God who will improve our life and make us happy without making any demands on us.” (p. 89) Unlike Barna who sees the new Emerging Church as the future of Christianity, Staub sees little hope in the Latest New Thing. He says, “Pop Christianity is not up to the challenge of formulating the deeper, personally renewing faith, and sometimes even our most promising new experimental churches are led by sincere, devoted Christians who themselves are captivated by our age and are in need of a radical transformation.” So where are we to look for a way out of the current morass of shallow sinecures? Instead of abandoning pop-psychology for Christian pop-psychology, we need to “dig a deeper well” as he describes it in the book. Christianity Lite is in the business of pandering to our needs and helping us find the path to happiness and delight. For some reason, today’s Culture Warriors are satisfied with the type of Christianity that does little more than reconstitute contemporary culture with a Christian logo. How can we consider a Christian version of American Idol to be any kind of progress toward deepening our walk with God? Staub challenges us to cultivate the spiritual disciplines that embrace a three-fold aim of identifying us as aliens in a world that is not our home, ambassadors building bridges between the Kingdom of Heaven and the one we are in on earth, and artists who reflect the creative capacity that was placed in us as part of God’s image. He points out that this is the road less traveled, the path that G. K. Chesterton said has not so much been “tried and found wanting but found difficult and left untried.” Staub closes the book with three chapters covering these very things. As aliens we need to pursue a selective acculturation in which, “…immigrants retain their own identity while making intentional choices about what in the general culture they will accept or reject.” (p. 146) Using C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as examples, he illustrates how it is possible for us to be fully Christian, fully creative, and fully impacting on the surrounding culture. For those who are weary of the alarmist, Chicken Little efforts of fear-mongering Christian Culture Warriors, The Culturally Savvy Christian offers a bracing alternative to simply watching the world self-destruct. His alternative is to pursue excellence and to pursue God in every facet of human endeavor. We should not be satisfied with mediocrity or even being just as good as the world. Our art and accomplishments should stand on their own merits rather than depending on a label of “Christian” to excuse us for producing less than God’s best. by Rick Presley |
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