A Theology of Safeway

Micah Mattix

A book with theory and case studies on a fresh way to understand and engage the culture we live in.

Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Charles A. Anderson, and Michael J. Sleasman, Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends, Baker Academic, March 2007. 288 pages, $24.

What do the contents of the Safeway checkout line tell us about our culture’s definition of that long-standing Socratic notion, “the good life”? What do Eminem’s sometimes bombastic rap songs tell us about current notions of despair and redemption? How does one relate these definitions to the ones found in the Scriptures? More importantly, why should one bother?

In Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends, the first book in Baker’s new “cultural exegesis” series, theologian and professor Kevin Vanhoozer and his co-editors, Charles A. Anderson and Michael J. Sleasman, set out to answer these and numerous other questions. They argue that theology is not just “faith seeking understanding” of God’s special revelation in the Scriptures alone, it also includes the application of Scripture to all areas of life, including what is called “the everyday.” Vanhoozer suggests that while theologians have excelled in the first, they have often lagged in the latter. But if theology does not engage the culture in which we live, the great danger is that Scripture itself, and the God it reveals, will come to be seen as irrelevant. While Vanhoozer does not mention this, the speed with which Western culture now changes seems to have increased the gap. Everyday Theology, therefore, can be understood as part of a growing effort to make sure theology keeps pace.

Reading Culture ‘Theologically’

In the introductory chapter, Vanhoozer, currently teaching at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, provides erudite and compelling reasons Christians should read culture “theologically.” To read culture theologically, he says, is to observe and examine culture from the perspective of faith, bounded by the truths revealed in Scripture. The first reason we should do so, Vanhoozer argues, is that products of culture are imaginative embodiments, as opposed to propositional statements, of beliefs and values. Christians who want to communicate the story of our faith to those in our culture must be able to identify and understand the current beliefs and values as they are expressed in their most well-known forms—including popular music, movies, personal blogs, and business practices. We must, he writes, “become bilingual,” understanding both Scripture and the culture in which we are called to speak.

Vanhoozer points out, however, that products of culture are not mere static expressions of beliefs and values. They shape how we view the world and how we act. He writes: “Prolonged exposure to cultural texts—and we are always exposed—produces various types of effects for good or ill. Culture is always cultivating our spirits in one way or another, sensitizing or desensitizing us, and enlivening or dulling our capacity to attend to various aspects of reality.” Therefore, a second reason we should read culture theologically is to become more critical in our consumption of cultural products and our participation in cultural activities—asking ourselves which forms are beneficial and which are not.

The third reason Vanhoozer provides for reading culture theologically is rather different from his earlier two, which are not uncommon in Christian discussion. Culture, he argues, is a product of human beings created in the image of God, and thus expresses something of who God is and something of who we are. He is quick to qualify that such expressions are secondary to God’s revelation in the Scriptures and should therefore be bounded by the biblical narrative of creation, fall, and redemption, but this understanding of culture clearly requires a different sort of engagement.

In discussing what he calls a “theologically thick” reading of culture, Vanhoozer describes what this sort of engagement might look like. It is an approach to culture that pays great attention to detail and avoids, whenever possible, a simplistic reduction to theological terms. At the same time, it faithfully attempts to describe “cultural discourse in terms of biblical discourse.” Thus, he writes:

“Thanks to the Spirit’s ministry of general revelation to the fractured image of God that we are as fallen human beings, part of what culture says is true, good, and beautiful; other parts, however, are false, bad, and ugly. It follows that we must hearken to cultural texts as possible vehicles for appropriating new insights into justice and truth while at the same time maintaining Scripture as our normative framework of interpretation.”

In this third sense, then, to read popular culture theologically is to read it from the largest possible perspective—that of the biblical narrative—with a willingness to learn from our culture’s insights, in addition to reading it for its shortcomings and falsehoods.

Argumentative Foundations

Vanhoozer’s argument that one can and should “read” culture from a Christian theological perspective has two sources—one old and one new. The first, not stated explicitly, is the biblical mandate to be prepared to communicate the Gospel to those around us, particularly as expressed in the words and example of Paul to be “all things to all men.” Vanhoozer’s argument here is anything but new; it is the latest in a long line of Christian engagements with the culture, from Augustine’s City of God to Jonathan Edwards’ The Nature of True Virtue to John Polkinghorne’s Belief in God in an Age of Science—attempts by followers of Christ to express the eternal truths of his Gospel in terms of the preoccupations of their times.

The second source of his argument, however, is new, and is indebted to the recent rise in academic interest in popular culture. This interest can be traced back to the rise of modern anthropology, modified by radical interpretations of Ferdinand de Saussure’s definition of the linguistic sign, where “sign” is understood to refer to all symbols of human expression—not just linguistic ones—which, in turn, make up the constituent parts of a “world” or a “web of meaning.” According to this understanding of “cultural signs,” the meaning of each sign is determined with respect to its relationship with the other signs. The effect of this theory has been both positive and negative. On the one hand, it has led to the recognition that all forms of human expression are forms of meaning-making, and, as such, can be studied and scrutinized. On the other hand, it has led to the tacit argument that all products of culture—both so-called “popular” and “high” forms—are of equal value. Many proponents of this view would say there is no real difference in inherent value between, say, Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice” and Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Bach’s fugues.

Vanhoozer rightly refuses to distinguish between “popular culture” and “high culture” in precisely these terms, but he avoids the trap of claiming that all forms of cultural expression are of equal value. To the contrary, he proposes that by examining culture on its own terms—but from the standpoint of “faith seeking understanding”—Christians have a role to play in making distinctions between what in our culture is valuable and what is not. He sees this role as far deeper and more complex than the simplistic directives that sometimes pass for aesthetic or critical judgment in Christian circles. In this sense, Vanhoozer is proposing an important caveat to the traditional apologetic model, one that takes seriously the promise that all of God’s creation—including those aspects of human culture that express something of who God is and who we are—is of inherent value.

Vanhoozer takes this promise seriously in Everyday Theology without, in turn, failing to distinguish (as some recent theologians have) between what is “noble” and “true” in our culture, as Paul said to the Philippians, and what is little more than an expression of our depravity. His ability to do this is one example of the clear-headed balance that he maintains throughout the first part of the book.

Case Studies in Cultural Critique

The bulk of the book is comprised of case studies on how to interpret cultural texts and trends, written by former students of Vanhoozer. We cannot mention here all the book’s insightful glosses on topics as varied as the music of Eminem, megachurch architecture, and what is called “transhumanism,” but a few examples, cited pell-mell, should suffice.

In a chapter called “The High Price of Unity: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” David G. Thompson notes contemporary challenges to the Declaration of Human Rights and asks whether the biblical doctrine of humanity created in the image of God might provide a more comprehensive foundation, despite its theistic assumptions, for the notion of human rights than the secular one provided in the declaration. In “Swords, Sandals, and Saviors: Visions of Hope in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator,” Michael J. Sleasman writes that the conflicting visions of hope in the film, Gladiator, “resonate with our own experiences of hope.” He sees in the film an example of how a future hope can affect present action in a way that shows the “pie in the sky” criticism of Christian eschatology to be misplaced.

Although the individual chapters sometimes read too much like a textbook, the authors do a good job of putting Vanhoozer’s methods into practice, pulling out numerous other insights—for example, the notion that the personal blog sometimes functions as a form of “confession without repentance,” or that our culture’s increasing uneasiness with death can be seen in the rising number of so-called “fantasy funerals.”

In the liberal arts, pendulums of academic fashion sometimes swing in ways that have embarrassing consequences for ardent proponents of this or that new theoretical approach. What is at first perceived as a breakthrough is scrutinized over time, corrected, and adjusted. In some cases, however, an approach is rightly consigned to oblivion, which seems to be the fast approaching fate of “deconstruction.” As one of deconstruction’s heirs, “cultural studies” needs to be approached with both prudence and a good dose of common sense. In Everyday Theology Vanhoozer seems to have done exactly that, gleaning the best of what the discipline has to offer while at the same time grounding his analysis in the unchanging revelation of the Scriptures.  

Micah Mattix is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Fribourg. He has been a lecturer and visiting fellow at the Department of English at Yale University and studies literary theory, aesthetics, world literature, and American poetry.

2 Responses (comments are closed) • Reviews, Arts and Culture, Faiths and Worldviews, Global Culture, Wed 18 Jul 2007