Culture Making and the City

Culture Making by Andy Crouch challenged me to think differently about the culture we live in and move beyond simply trying to analysize culture through my worldview to cultivating and creating culture. In the past I have thought about culture primarily from the perspective of worldview which is vitally important, but have often failed to see the importance of moving beyond viewing culture to creating culture. I am being challenged to think about what it would mean for me to make culture. The city is the ideal place for culture making and Salt Lake City has become my primary focus.

As the world becomes more and more urban, the possibilities for culture making are great. Because of it's density and diversity of people, the city provides an environment in which creative expression flourishes. Tim Keller makes this case stating, “Because I am put together (by its density) with unique numbers of diverse people, all my thinking and views are radically challenged. I am confronted with creative new ways to think about things, and I must abandon my traditional ways or become far more knowledgeable and committed to them than I was before. Thus I become vastly more creative, committed, skillful in all I am or do. (A Biblical Theology of the City, Evangelicals Now. July 2002). There is no better place for beauty to flourish than the city. Joel Kotkin puts it the best, "Cities compress and unleash the creative urges of humanity" (The City: A Global History, xx)

In thinking about culture making, we must first ask, "what is culture?" According to Crouch, "culture is what we make of the world." Humans are created in the image of God and this God, as Crouch states, "is first of all a source of limitless and extraodinary creativity." (pg. 21) As creatures made in his image, our creative activity is not disconnected from meaning, it is not meaningless. Rather, our imaging God by exercising our true humanity is incredibly meaningful and leads to beautiful possibilities.

Culture also has the power to shape what is possible in the world. Cultivaating and creating produces cultural artifacts and goods that shape the world. These cultural artifacts and goods also result from what has been produced in the past, but influence the future. Culture making involves cultivating both cultural goods that have been produced in the past and the creation of new cultural goods. The city is the place of abundant cultural goods in which to cultivate and to be stimulated toward creating new cultural goods.

What are you and I creating? Is it a cultural good that leads to what is possible? I have spent way too much time critiqueing culture. I hope to fiqure out how I might first cultivate what is beautiful in the culture and then move toward creating more beauty. Creating beauty requires that we become more and more human, living consistant with who we were created to be.

Crouch states, "our most important cultural contribution will very likely come from doing whatever keeps us precisely in the center of delight and surprise." (pg. 252) The energy of creating comes the moment we live out our true humanity by becoming more and more ourselves. This leads to life and influence in the culture.

Cornel West further defines culture in relationship to life and death. He defines culture as "dynamic, ever-changing structures of feeling and structures of meaning that help sustain humans in the face of death and extinction that’s inevitable."

Among culture there are existing channels or structures which influence the culture greatly and that impact our lives. Among them are business, government, media, church, arts and entertainment, education, and the social sector. Concerning these 7 channels, Gabe Lyons states, “Their combined output of ideas, films, books, theology, websites, restaurants, investments, social work, laws, medical breakthroughs and technology drive an entire nation. The ideas and values they perpetuate sustain the moral fiber and social conscience of the culture. The people who lead these influential institutions have the opportunity to shape the ideas, thoughts and preferences of millions of others." (Influencing Culture: An Opportunity for the Church, Fermi Project Online Journal (2007), pg. 10)

Spheres of culture shape what is possible and what is impossible. Condemning, critiqueing, and copying culture all have there place at times, but Crouch states, "creating culture is the only viable source of change." (pg. 73) The question I am asking is, "How can I create more cultural goods with others I am connected with in our city?"

The challenges for the transformation of Salt Lake City into what is possible are many, but ultimately what has been promised the biblical story is that what began as a beautiful garden (Genesis 1 & 2) will end in a glorious city (Revelation 21 & 22). The city today with its creative energy and its vivid diversity reflects the current reality that the beautiful kingdom of God has been inaugurated. But due to the disruption of beauty, we must continually strive to serve toward that end while looking forward to the day when all things will be made new and the glorious city of God will be in our midst. In that day the city's inhabitants will know that God reigns and God wins. Until that day we seek the welfare of the city in which we dwell through creative activity that becomes cultural goods. With hope we seek and we serve until the day God will dwell in all his fullness and we will know the reality of the new and glorious city!