Thursday, January 31, 2008

Week 4--Wednesday Reflection

I agree with Marx about fetishism. But I can also see a fetishism resulting from a person producing their own goods all the way through as well. A worker could have a kind of over-appreciation for his/her goods, which could lead to an under-appreciation of the actual economic value of the goods (like a person having a garage sale whose unwilling to give up certain sentimental items).

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Week 4--Response to Todd's Blog (Cobb Chapter 3)

As I read Todd’s comments about the way Tillich’s theology was affected by WWII, I began thinking about other great theologians who were also affected by that tumultuous time (Bonheoffer and Barth). So in a way, not only does cultural creativity and construction shape us, but also cultural upheaval and destruction sometimes play even bigger roles to inform our cultural identities. As a result, our understanding of God is then affected by such experiences.

But I don’t agree with Todd’s statement: “revelatory substance in culture is rare, if at all present.” I think that whether it’s positive (beautiful art) or negative (disillusionment that follows war) it all colors and shades the way we look at God. It is God who arranges, selects, and uses much of it. And then God pushes aside, disregards and disposes of the rest.

Monday, January 28, 2008

Week 4--Monday Reflection

I found myself relating to the general problem of an artificial church service in our current society. It is especially important in a time when there is so little authenticity in culture. The one place where we would (or should) expect to find a real human experience is with people of God. I think we're getting to the point in our culture where we it's getting harder and harder to bring about an authentic experience within the four walls of church. I'm encouraged to learn about others who are leading the charge outside the walls of church to bring about a Christ-inspired movement in our culture.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Week 3--Barker Chapter 5--Evolution, Biology and Culture

Psychotherapy uses rethinking and cognitive evaluation of raw emotions in order to get the jump on and have mastery over some of these instinctive feelings that are evolutionary throwbacks. But does this mean that our emotional foundation should be completely uprooted? Should we expect, as part of our evolutionary progress, to increasingly displace our mainly emotional existence with a mainly rational one? Is there a place for a moderate and healthy, emotional existence that’s held in check by reason? Is there a place for emotions like fear (important for avoiding harm), hate (important for coming against things which are determined to be wrong or destructive on a major scale), or even love (important for putting us holistically in line with the things we admire most about existence)? Or are all of these emotions on their way out? Are we becoming the Borg!?

Week 3--Barker Chapter 6--A New World Disorder?

Identity formation has moved from being thought in terms of production to that of consumption. But what’s really happening is a production/consumption movement in one stroke. As members of our culture consume and commodify they also produce trends and new cultural forms. This consumption-as-expression (production) is very much reflective of society’s increasing distrust and disillusionment regarding modern and Enlightenment modes of identity formation. I think people are sick of thinking of people as “self-made” or the Horatio Alger ethic of can-do Americanism. Instead, now most people aren’t ashamed of being passive (at least outwardly, seemingly aloof) consumers of cultural material, regardless of being potentially duped into it. People seem less and less ashamed of giving themselves over to the machinery of the culture industry, so it can have its way with them. I still think we distrust the whole industry of pop culture, but we give ourselves over to it because we know we have an increasing amount of freedom within it that allows us to define ourselves.

Week 3--Cobb Chapter 3--Theology and Culture

Cobb gives an important caution against giving deviant voices in culture priority over mainstream voices simply because they are deviant. I think there is a tendency in Christian circles to make this mistake because we often pride ourselves on being an inherently countercultural movement. Anthony Pinn makes the mistake of favoring dissident voices against the mainstream to the extent that such voices are uncritically thought to be superior to the mainstream. But I also think subtler versions of this kind of privileging of outside voices can be problematic. James Cone makes a similar mistake when he comes very close to saying that only oppressed people (outwardly) are true Christians. While it’s good that Cone recognizes the special rapport that oppressed peoples have with the Gospel, it should not be used as a wholesale acceptance of every oppressed voice. I don’t think Cone is advocating as much, but I think his type of thinking and writing often leads people down that road. This kind of blanket judging is most often reactionary. An uncritical acceptance of outside cultural voices can be just as hastily disruptive to church and culture relations as solely accepting voices that are inside the church.

Week 3--Bevans Chapter 3--Models

I never really thought about the designation of God as “Father” being a model for understanding God’s mystery. But come to think of it, most people’s experience with their father is characterized by mystery. Fathers are often distant and have a strange and curious allure, especially to sons. The Father/Son dynamic is perfected in Jesus’ relationship with his Father in heaven, and the model is given to us as ideal. We too can experience the mystery of our heavenly Father in a way that we know we are loved and protected, even if it might seem like our Father is “distant.”

Week 3--Response to Randy's Blog

Concerning your take on Barker’s treatment of the subject of evolution, I agree and disagree. First off, I agree that Barker has a dim view of incorporating evolutionary biology and theology. He seems to assume the inevitability of “chance” governing existence that is has no “telos.” But I think it’s possible that God set up the algorithm of natural selection with a teleological aim. In keeping with God’s main mode of operation, the whole process only appears to be a product of chance with our limited knowledge and imagination.

I disagree only in the sense that Barker’s assessment shouldn’t cause us to doubt or give up on a biological-evolution approach to culture studies. His challenges of meaninglessness and Godlessness should cause us to align ourselves even more closely with science to show how God is all in all.

Week 3--MLK Reflection

One of my undergrad professors, Crerar Douglas, gives his experience of watching Martin Luther King preach at Riverside Church in Harlem when he attended Columbia. Douglas was raised in a quiet and comfortable, middle-class Christian environment. He describes being totally transformed by listening to Dr. King preach. He writes, “King was talking to a God whose yes to life meant death to all passivity, both the passivity of a God who only waits and that of a young man who only says yes and then starts counting his private blessings.” Douglas speaks of his conversion as one from counting private blessings to, all of a sudden, recognizing and counting the curses of our society. This ongoing recognition for King manifested in apocalyptic preaching that jarred people out of their complacency. In our hindsight of Dr. King forty years later, we have received a more domesticated and subdued image of Dr. King from the media. As “non-violence” is one of the first things we think of when we think of Dr. King, we often forget that his message warned the complacent people of our nation of a wrathful God who will not stand for injustice.

For anyone who's interested, here's the link to Dr. Douglas' conversion experience:

http://www.crerardouglas.com/documents/My_experience.htm

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Week 3--Wednesday Class Reflection

I was glad to hear about a renewed emphasis on making the kingdom of God the rubric for missional theories and practices. I really like Brueggemann’s (and others) concept of regarding the Church as in exile in our post-institutional Christian society. The institutional Church represents triumphalism to many people, and I think the breakdown of the institutional Church in the West is a sign of our going into exile. It only makes sense that we act like we are in exile, which is compatible with a “Sermon on the Mount” and kingdom-based way of doing missions.

Monday, January 21, 2008

Week 2--Response to Aaron's MLK Day post

I like Aaron's reflection on MLK on this day of remembering. As I read the quote and the post, I got to thinking how truly definitive of the Kingdom of God this is. At the heart of Jesus' teachings on the Kingdom is loving/helping others and loving God. Also, the only way we can truly love our neighbor is to understand him/her. This is why cultural and religious studies is so important. The "single garment of destiny" that Dr. King refers to consists of many different fabrics. If we are committed to struggle for one another as a community, we need to understand the different ways we relate to the world, and our peculiar and unique modes of "struggling." Only then can we be one seemless garment.

Week 2--Cobb Chapter 2 (Hyperreality and Simulacrum)

Reading about hyperreality and simulacrum was illuminating. Is the Church troubled by the never-ending cycle of images that has no reference? I can anticipate where this is going and its relevance for Christian missions and cultural studies. The postmodern hunger for a fabrication that’s better than the real essence upon which the fabrication is based (if there even is an essence???) begs the question: is the Church offering a spirituality that has an actual referent, or is it just offering a package of symbols and signs through which people and communities can better cope with the “incomprehensibility” that’s out there (63)? I think if we are to claim that there actually is a real referent behind the signs of our religion, we better have a good explanation in this age of skepticism and a proclivity for “fabrications.”

Week 2--Bevans Chapter 2 (Creation-centered Theology)

How can we even have a conversation between culture and theology if we adopt a redemption centered theology? In the instance of creation centered theology the context can be revelatory, but in the redemption centered view the context dims the light of God’s revelation. I think we can hold to a creation-based model by understanding that the context of culture itself is not holy, but it is infused with the Spirit of God. Thinking that there’s nothing positive about the culture at large is a misunderstanding of God’s Kingdom.

Week 2--Barker, Chapter 4 (Rorty)

I was interested to read about Rorty. Often our conditioning convinces us of the absoluteness of what we believe and its universal foundations, until we are tested and “real life” smashes us with the irony that the opposite of our expectations and hopes are often there to shake us up. I think this increasing realization of the fragile foundations of Western culture (and all its canonized values) explains the current trends of strong irony in pop culture specifically. Especially comedy is increasingly ironic and dark; the most comedic elements are the most twisted and unfortunate. We laugh because we resonate with the recognition of this truth in our deepest being. Beneath all the serious and lofty ideas about our ordered and purposeful existence, there is an increasingly profound distrust (on an individual and institutional level) in our cherished and fuzzy notions about existence.

Week 2--Barker, Chapter 3 (Arnold and Leavis)

The cultural theories and attitudes of Arnold and Leavis can be easily brushed aside by contemporary students of culture as being elitist and passé. But as paranoid and overall skeptical as they may come across to us, it’s hard for us to really understand the uncertain times that they were dealing with. I think there are ways in which critics today are guilty of being overly reactionary to some of the more unsettling signs of our times. For instance, we often bemoan and resist the widespread effects of technologies like the internet and cell phones. Many of us fear the potential of these tools to further isolate and individualize us as a society. And as a result, some of us believe that these technologies are inherently bad.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Week 2 Wednesday: Class Reflection

Today’s class got me wondering about one particular definition of culture. If culture is something to do with a society’s beliefs and customs, then isn’t God’s Kingdom a kind of culture? Should we even think of God’s Kingdom as some kind of culture that trumps or is juxtaposed with “people from every tribe, people, language and nation” (Rev. 5:9)? The reason I wonder this is because the “tradition of the elders” (Mt. 15:2) could be related to “high culture.” And Jesus and his crowd could be considered as part of the folk culture. But Jesus was only opposed to the high culture of his day when it conflicted with “God’s culture.”

Monday, January 14, 2008

Elite Culture and the Working Class: Week 2 Monday

I was very interested to learn about the development of popular culture from its beginnings as a working class movement and into the early 20th century. I was surprised to hear in the lecture about how the different classes of society all shared and esteemed the same values, and had similar experiences with art and music. I was somewhat aware of the cultural intermingling of social classes, but hasn't there always been some cultural separation? Isn't folk culture typically associated with mass culture and high culture associated with the elite class?

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Week 1--Response to Amy K's Blog

I can relate to your comment about people who have been broken by the Church, myself included. It’s interesting to think of our time at Fuller and how our theologies will be inevitably shaped by our negative experiences with Church. People like you and me will continually seek out and emphasize the apparent lack of love, grace and compassion in the Church. These realities that believers like us seize upon are just as important as other realities from different perspectives. Like Bevans points out, such is inherent in contextual theology. I hope we are, as you say, getting back to the basics. But I think the way back (whatever that means???) unavoidably means an upheaval (whatever that means???) in the Church. In order for something to truly live and thrive, it must die first, right?

Week 1--Bevans, Chapter 1 (Missional Language)

Bevans writes about the need for the church to use different languages to talk to different cultures in the same way that God used different languages to talk to the ancient Hebrews and Hellenistic Jews. His point can’t be exaggerated or mentioned enough, but there is still the huge obstacle of the language barrier. A real danger in our missional approach today is to misuse or misunderstand the languages of particular cultures in our attempts to communicate the Gospel. For all the seeker-sensitivity and concerns about relevance in the Church today, the Church on the whole still converses awkwardly with the culture at large. The solution, I think, is to allow God to fully incarnate in the culture to which we are ministering. This happens through us by our diligent learning of, as well as our immersion in, the culture in question. Inherent in properly learning and immersing is an assumption of the culture’s goodness and value. This includes religious stances other than our own. After all, how can we truly be the incarnate Christ in the most particular way in that culture if we are adversarial towards them?

Week 1--Cobb, Chapter 1 (Myth & History)

Our myths instruct us of the soul of history. What has happened to the soul of history since it has been banished from the modern mind? Like Cobb, Crerar Douglas of Cal State University, Northridge also talks about how the demythologizing and demystifying of modern society has happened in proportion to the rise of what Dr. Douglas calls Religion L.O. (Less Obvious). Religion in the less obvious sense includes everything in our arsenal of expression of daily living. From pop-culture to politics, Rel. L.O. seems to have filled the void created by the marginalization of Religion O (Rel. in the obvious sense—organized religion.)

So it looks like the human impulse of relating to God in mythic ways cannot be suppressed. Instead of Jesus, today most people settle for Superman. Instead of Moses, we now have Judge Judy. The Superbowl has taken the place of the conquest of Canaan. And the book of Job might fit 300 bars of Blues music, but we have much shorter versions today. These archetypal symbols of old are substituted, in an earnest need to maintain the balance of the human heart and the soul of history.

This appears to satisfy modern sensitivities. The only problem is that our substitutes seem to be lacking in their ability to comprehensively relate to ultimate issues. Many of such substitutes are spiritual junk food consumed while commuting in our daily, typically this-worldly, modern pursuits. Catching a movie or listening to a 3-minute song on the radio is often like eating empty calories. They give us just enough energy to get through, but lack the wholesome spiritual nutrition of our well-rounded, time-tested traditions. The difference in the ancient myths is that they were designed for a sustained and complete dealing with God. One of the Church’s main missionary concerns is trying to balance the old (comprehensive and time-tested traditions) with the new (modern experience and things that are relevant to the experience).

Week 1--Barker, Chapter 2 (Productive Consumers)

We are moving from an era of pessimism and skepticism in politics and economics to one of optimism in the increasingly autonomous and democratic market of ideas and goods. This recent explosion of “texts” that has taken place (i.e. the internet) has served to demonstrate more clearly than ever before just how much the determination of meaning is performed by the consumer, as Hall suggests. The almost limitless raw cultural material we now have access to ensure an exponential number of meanings. The means of production are being found to not be in the hands of oppressive forces beyond ourselves, but within us. We are becoming convinced that if we are being oppressed as consumers, for the most part, it is because we choose to be so.

Week 1--Barker, Chapter 1 (Anti-essentialism and Post-structuralism)

The Church has to take ideas like Anti-essentialism and Post-structuralism seriously if it is going to properly put them into a Christian perspective. For instance, I’m wondering about the implications of Anti-essentialism when applied to Paul’s argument in 1 Cor. 11 about women being subordinate to men. When Paul argues on the basis of Gen. 2 that women are subordinate to men, is it really based on “the nature of things” (v. 14)? Or is all of Paul’s rhetoric simply transparently revealing his agenda for upholding the artifice of social conventions (v. 16)?

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Social, Theological or Both?

What is the main difficulty with answering McGavern’s question about whether the barriers in missions are social or theological? I think it’s the fact that the theological component of our religion arises from a social context. It’s not always easy to extract the pure, undiluted theological truth of the Gospel from its social setting (and most often not even appropriate). Sometimes it’s even difficult to wrest the Gospel from our own cultural trappings, as McGavern learned in his ministry. As in every Christian endeavor, Jesus’ life and teaching give us cues for understanding the relationship between the theological and the cultural. Jesus had a somewhat ambivalent attitude toward culture. He accepted all things in culture that didn’t get run counter to God’s direction for it. But he hated the things that did.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Culture & Mission: Week 1 Monday

If we as Christians are to embrace the culture at large as a capable mode of God’s general revelation, we need to consider God’s revelation in other religions as an aspect of our culture. Other religions offer serious insights about the world and beyond because God’s voice rings out across all creation. This realization has an inevitable impact on our missiology because it causes us to adopt a posture of conciliation rather than contention. The painstaking work of carefully sorting through the good and bad elements of thought-systems different than our own is more respectful of God and of others than dismissing them wholesale.