Christians typically deal with popular culture with anxious rejection or blithe acceptance, but more is called for. Popular culture and apologetics, properly understood, need each other. The author presents a brief theology of popular culture, presenting it as a religiously significant mixture of grace and idolatry that shapes desire. As such, it demands an apologetical response. He then presents an analysis of apologetics as persuasion, arguing that apologetics is not just concerned with facts, but with creating a bridge between the desires of the unbeliever’s heart and Christian hope. The connection between popular culture and apologetics is desire. Desire is not simply biological or emotional. It is revelation with eschatological significance; desire carries messages about the consummation of the world. The essay ends with an extended discussion of how desire is configured in the film An Education, and how it led to good conversations with his non-Christian college students.
The Institute for Cultural Engagement, an official program of Multnomah University and Biblical Seminary