Christians Can't Transform Culture, Have to Create It
Christians are constantly asking themselves how they can transform "the culture." The way to do it, according to one of the foremost thinkers on the intersection of faith and culture, is to create culture.
Andy Crouch, executive producer of Intersect|Culture, a series of short documentary films, calls it "culture-making."
"As I was thinking about cultural transformation I became convinced that culture changes when people actually make more and better culture," he said in an interview with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's Student Soul.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
"If we want to transform culture, what we actually have to do is to get into the midst of the human cultural project and create some new cultural goods that reshape the way people imagine and experience their world," said Crouch.
It's an ever-changing America and culture's constant has always been changed.
Yet in the past, Christians largely tended to condemn culture or avoid it, which fails to actually change it. And Christians are known for being critical and not people who are creative, Crouch pointed out.
"How many boycotts really work?" he said. "If all we do is stay away from the movie theater, then that theater is still going to show movies."
Over the decades, condemning culture turned into critiquing it, then copying, and now, Christians are consuming culture.
"If all we do is just go to whatever movies are being shown, that isn’t going to change what’s being offered to the public either," Crouch added.
The only way to transform culture, or in this case change what's being shown at the movie theater, is to make something different.
"It’s only when you make something different that the culture of the movie theater or the movie industry will change."
The latest example of that is a local Baptist church in Albany, Ga., that produced a Christian movie and released it nationwide. "Facing the Giants" by Sherwood Productions raked in more than $10 million in 15 weeks and the church was applauded by Christian leaders for engaging the culture in outreach efforts.
"We seek the transformation of every culture but how we do it is by actually making culture," said Crouch.
Crouch visited five "very different" cultural environments in North America to shoot short documentary films for Intersect|Culture. The films encourage Christians to change the cultural context around them, such as a local neighborhood, rather than the mass culture.
"Cultural change almost always starts small," he noted.
Crouch is editorial director for The Christian Voice Project at Christianity Today International. He was the editor-in-chief of re:generation quarterly magazine for an emerging generation of culturally creative Christians and served as campus minister with InterVarsity at Harvard University.
Speaking to believers in the 21st century, Crouch called Christians to now take the step from consuming culture to creating it.
"When you become creative, when you become someone whose life is about what you’re doing with other people to shape the culture, the appeal of just consuming diminishes."
