I was over on the mainland last week at Summit Pacific College visting my daughter, helping her pack up before she headed off to El Salvador, and Guatemala. This is a college that boasts, about the missions courses...global, urban and cross cultural. But as Ashley was packing, I used her laptop to tie up a few loose ends in e-mail...at the same time I browsed around my blogroll to get some updates, and to connect with some friends.
It didn't take long to discover mission does not get to close to culture. Youtube, and Flickr and other sites were also banned...absolutely no access. Also certain movies, secular music...and dancing banned. So much for being in the world...but not of the world.
How does one engage the culture that surrounds us, that in reality we constantly swim in...if you don't even go near it? How does one speak into it, when there is no relationship or understanding?What happens when you have a church that creates and lives in its own culture?
Veteran religion editor Phyllis Tickle points out that since the 1960s, popular culture is where we explore our beliefs: “More theology is conveyed in, and probably retained from one hour of popular television, than from all the sermons that are also delivered on any given weekend in America’s synagogues, churches and mosques."
So much theology is derived from popular culture that many argue that it has replaced religion.
A leading Jewish intellectual and commentator on culture, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, believes that popular culture is not only displacing religion but actually is a religion: “Hollywood is not just a place—it is a world in itself. Hollywood has done something remarkable: it has created a great and very successful religion. Through its successful missionaries—the films produced in Hollywood—it has spread around the globe, gaining adherents faster than any other religion in the world. If it has not attained the stature of a full-fledged religion, at least it is a very strong cult."
Every week, newly released songs, films, or books give voice to our common human concerns and probe the essential human questions:
Is there a God?
Who is God?
Who are we?
What is our meaning and identity?
Where did we come from?
What is our destiny?
What is love?
Why am I lonely?
What will satisfy me and make me happy?
Does anybody understand me?
Is there any hope?
Popular culture is a theological place…there is " no " sacred secular divide. How often do we find that when stir the culture, this strange soupy mix of sacred and secular...God is already in the mix.
And so we pay attention to the stories told there.
we listen to the cries of our age.
we ask how we can better understand and communicate good news to people who, based on the hopelessness so often on display in today's popular culture, so obviously need it.
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