Media experts differ widely on the value of popular culture. Is it today’s “face of Jesus”? Or, does it vitiate spirituality and tear down worthwhile societal values? The article traces concepts of culture and culture formation. The author argues that popular culture both reflects and affects the values people construct for themselves. Popular culture is a meaning-making and religious act. By engaging general revelation, it may express human hungers, anxieties, injustices and sorrows significantly and truly. Yet it may provide an alternate reality and narrative, supplanting the sacred metanarrative for the plot of life once provided by the religious community. This reality often centers on entertainment personalities through whom people can vicariously live their lives. Popular culture’s narrative framework for personal identity formation may produce its own “God,” and miss its God-ordained purpose of providing an insightfully human narrative that may through the Spirit lead ultimately to the Logos, Jesus Christ. The article is followed by two critical responses.
Response One — ‘(Pop) Culture: Playground of the Spirit or Diabolical Device?’
Response Two — ‘(Pop) Culture: Playground of the Spirit or Diabolical Device?’
On Being A Good American: A Christian Meditation
Hauerwas reflects on the fact that both the political left and the political right in America consider his work to be insufficiently patriotic. He notes that some allege he has done much to discourage Christians from patriotism and participation in the democratic process in general. Much of the critiques center on the issues related to pacifism. In this essay, Hauerwas contends that the politics inherent in pacifism offer a constructive way for Christians to understand how rightly to serve their neighbors. John Howard Yoder’s understanding of pacifism and Augustine’s account of politics in the City of God offer further help in understanding the tensions inherent in Christian engagement with the world. In the end, liberalism construes America as universal in such a way that the church cannot accept “patriotism” as commonly understood. Patriotism can only be a virtue for Christians when we remember that we have a more parochial loyalty to Christ and the church, which must always take precedence.
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Justice, Neighbor-Love and the Just-War Tradition: Christian Reflections on Just Use of Force
Christian moral thinkers virtually from the beginning have found it necessary to respond to the common objection that war and armed force are contrary to Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount to turn the other cheek and not resist evil. Significantly, throughout the historical development of just-war thinking, Christian theologians discuss war under the heading of charity. What does love require? The consensual wisdom of the Christian moral tradition is that resisting evil and upholding the common good are consistent with the nature of charity. While Jesus does not indicate how we might respond in situations that entail a third party, Christian ethics does not require that we “turn the cheek” of another party in the direction of an aggressor. To the contrary, charity expresses itself in protecting an innocent third party from oppressive injustice. The enduring political-moral wisdom at the heart of the just-war tradition, though frequently misunderstood or ignored, is supremely relevant for today. Whether in the domestic or international context, it seeks to protect the common weal. Armed force by a duly constituted authority–to restrain and punish evil–is the other side of promoting the common good and civil society. From the standpoint of Christian faith, this can be a valid expression of charity, since justice, rightly construed, seeks to protect one’s neighbor and safeguard the social order.