Christian pop culture: An Eternal Oxymoron

A fascinating piece on evangelical Christian pop-culture...on how the "Jesus is my homeboy" crowd is doing in the cultural marketplace of ideas...

According to this columnist, they're tanking. Evangelical Christians are beginning to see that their meager attempts to be funny, hip, or subversive are just woeful attempts to co-opt what the secularists have been doing for for over a century. Christian rock seems to be little more than a few synthesizers playing a few prolonged orchestral chords, all the while with the name "Jesus" intoned in the manner of a love song. Christian raves, Christian pro-wrestling, and many more offshoots provide Christians their own alternate reality in which they can live comfortably without fear of pollution. Yet one (namely, I) might ask: for being evangelistic, front-line cultural warriors, these niche-based artists seem to be at best using 22 rifles against the enemies' AK-47s. Worst case, they aren't even willing to get out of the bunker.

Of course, this posting might come uncomfortably close to we LDS connoisseurs of LDS products. Admit it; we've all imbibed of the EFY subculture in our times at some point. We've all either bought LDS themed T-shirts, Peter Breinholt/JOseph: A Nashville Tribute cds, and Greg Hansen calendars. Is this wrong? Most certainly not...I like some of them myself (though the "I Know that My Redeemer Lives" song on the EFY cd is a little soothingly sketchy). We've all watched Saturday's Warrior, though some of us might compare the experience to an awkward family reunion where we have to endure the odd views of our strange Utah relatives. Some of us might have even seen a beautiful CTR ring that seems to draw more attention to itself than to "the right" (available to you for three easy installments of 119.95...that's only 475.00...just call 1-800-BUY-ZION for more information).

Such a mentality, unfortunately, is the illegitimate son of a very legitimate principle. Call it the "Fortress Zion" paradigm--we talk of our homes, family, church as being a fortress against the outside world; it is not an enormous leap to believe that since this fortress is under attack, that we must hunker down and weather the storm. This mentality gives expression in our tendencies to limit our friendly associations to members (I do it too), to only participate exclusively in Church humanitarian projects (if we participate at all), and to consider the works of Sherri Dew (poignant though they may be) as the pinnacle of our cultural edifice. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell has noted: the love of the gospel leads us into the fray, not away from Ninevah.

As a caveat, I only question Deseret Book because it is a cooperation that publishes many, many things by many authors with doctrinally unsound positions. As such, I believe that it must be seen as an entity separate from the church. I suppose the broader question is this...what relationship does having a distinct cultural identity have to our spirituality/theology? How "peculiar" must we be? And do we have something to offer society that the evangelical culture does not? While other utopian societies demonized dancing, the arts...the Mormons were the first to bring it to the West. President Kimball remarked: "Members of the Church should be peers or superiors to any others in natural ability, extended training, plus the Holy Spirit which should bring them light and truth."

In other words, we need to give a good name to the scholarship, the art, the music of the Christian faithful. Jewish scholarship has been wonderfully represented, but their orthodoxy has largely crumbled under the weight of modernity. Christian scholarship has melted under the heat of the culture wars. Mormons remain as the wild card.