The Year's Best Books on Culture

I should qualify this post by saying that not all of these books were published in 2008, although quite a few of them were. These were the eleven books that I found most significant and/or interesting that related in some way to culture. I hope you'll find them as interesting and thought-provoking as I did. (The order listed is simply the order in which I read them.)


Hurt: Inside the World of Today's Teenagers (2004) – Chap Clark

You could almost call this an academic study. This is no lightweight book; Clark has done his research. You may not agree with it, you may not like it, but you can't ignore what he has to say about youth culture, how it got where it is and where it's headed. A must-read for teachers, parents or anyone else who spends time around teens.





The Dangerous Act of Worship (2007) – Mark Labberton

Labberton calls Christians to extend their worship of God beyond the worship service, beyond the walls that separate us from the homeless, the heart-broken, the needy - the people we either can't or don't want to see in our lives. A very bold, convicting book. (This is also the book that really got me into a serious study of culture, so blame Labberton!)





Islam at the Crossroads: Understanding Its Beliefs, History, and Conflicts (2002) - Paul Marshall, Roberta Green and Lela Gilber

Islam: The Religion and the People (2008) - Bernard Lewis, Buntzie Ellis Churchill




I highly recommend both of these books to anyone seeking to understand the Islamic faith and culture.







Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985, 2005 reprint) - Neil Postman

Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth about the American Voter (2008) - Rick Shenkman



Another two books that could be read together. It doesn't matter that Postman's book was first published over twenty years ago. Neither does it matter that the presidential election is over. Both Postman and Shenkman have plenty to tell us if we're willing to listen.





Healing for a Broken World: Christian Perspectives on Public Policy (2008) - Steve Monsma

This book was responsible for many excellent (and sometimes heated!) discussions in a recent Sunday School class. If you missed the class and enjoy lots of food for thought, pick up Monsma's book.





The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (2008) - Timothy Keller

In the late 1980s, Keller started Redeemer Presbyterian Church in the heart of Manhattan. He's heard every argument from every type of skeptic of Christianity and knows how to answer them. An exceptional book that any Christian interested in culture should read.





Everyday Apocalypse: The Sacred Revealed in Radiohead, The Simpsons and Other Pop Culture Icons (2002) - David Dark

Okay, I don't expect everyone to get as jazzed about this one as I did, but if you're into the arts, you should consider reading it. I know, it's a stretch to think that there are Christian principles in The Simpsons, but read with an open mind. You might be surprised.





Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations (2008) - Alex & Brett Harris

Teenagers (and brothers) Alex and Brett Harris don't believe teens are challenged enough by adults. Even worse, with adult expectations so low, many teens see no reason to rise above those expectations. Alex and Brett are out to change all that. Although the book is written for a young adult audience, adults will want to read it too.





Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Callling (2008) - Andy Crouch

Crouch has tackled a monumental task head-on: analyzing the culture and examining how Christians can make a real difference. An absolute must-read.

Culture Center Meeting

Here’s a brief overview of what was discussed at the “Introduction to the Culture Center” on August 17:

Lately we’re been hearing a good bit from the pulpit about the Great Commission and the Cultural Mandate. What we’ve come to call the Great Commission is found in Matthew 28:19-20:

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all the things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

The Cultural Mandate is found in Genesis 1:26-28:

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

The Great Commission tells us to make disciples of the nations. The responsibility to do this rests primarily with the church in preaching the gospel and equipping its people to help bring others to Christ, further carrying out the commission. The Cultural Mandate seeks to bring God’s order to human society and all creation. The implementation of the mandate is primarily the responsibility of individual Christians.

So how are we doing in carrying out the Cultural Mandate? Are we treating the world the way it should be treated? Are we treating other people the way they should be treated? Do we even think about taking the Cultural Mandate beyond the confines of the church and into our lives? Just how do we identify the Cultural Mandate in, for instance, our jobs?

What exactly do we do at work? Does your profession help people? Have you ever thought about it? I have and it’s pretty convicting.

So let’s take an example. Let’s say there’s a guy at the local grocery store stocking shelves, bagging groceries, etc. Sure, he’s stocking shelves and bagging groceries, but he’s also helping to feed people. Maybe if he thinks about it, he might think of other ways to feed people, people who can’t get to the grocery store, people who can’t afford groceries. Maybe he comes up with a plan for donating food to the needy. Maybe he begins to go to work thinking about more than just earning a paycheck, thinking about helping to provide what people need to live.

How can you help people where you work? Ask enough questions and you’ll get answers. When we think about nothing beyond the paycheck, we’re not really caring about people. But when you do care, you’ll start thinking about how you can help, about how you can start forming relationships. When you build relationships, you really won’t have to be so concerned with saying anything about being a Christian. People will know that there’s something different about the way you’re treating them.

When you genuinely start helping people, when you build relationships, people are likely to respond to what you’re saying. This is more than practicing random acts of kindness. It’s bringing the love of Christ to His entire creation, especially those created in His image.

Applying the Cultural Mandate at work is just one aspect of your life outside the church, just one way you can positively influence the culture. Sure it might be small, but so what? Start small, start local.

So how else does the Cultural Mandate affect our lives? What about in our choices of entertainment? Is it important for you to listen to music, to watch movies that recharge your soul in positive ways? What about the choices you make politically, who you’re going to vote for? How does the Cultural Mandate affect the environment? Education? Public policy? How you think about sports?

What we want to do in the Culture Center is to help you to live out the Cultural Mandate as individual Christians, to equip people to respond to cultural issues by engaging the culture, bringing a Christ-like influence to the culture around us. Wherever we are, we should have a mending effect in this broken world.

Too often we see areas of our culture that need a Christ-like influence, but aren’t sure how we can get involved. We want to provide resources that will allow you to use your gifts to impact the culture in a positive way. We already have many ministries in place: Disaster Relief, homeless ministries, food pantry and several others. But these just scratch the surface. You might know of a need in the community that is getting no attention. Maybe it’s not something that falls under the leadership of the church, but you as a Christian have a passion for it. Maybe it’s a public policy issue or maybe it’s something as simple as spreading the word about a really uplifting movie you just watched. We want to connect you with people who may already be doing those things. If it’s something new, we want to look at what we can do to address it.

A trellis provides a structure for growth. If you have plants in your backyard and you want them to expand over a certain area, you put up a trellis. If that trellis only has two growth points of a couple of inches high, you aren’t going to get very much coverage. For a long time, we’ve had just a few parts to our trellis: you could become an officer in the church or teach Sunday School. Well, that’s pretty limiting. Maybe get involved with a small group or volunteer in a ministry. That’s better, but there’s more. And maybe your gifts aren’t in those areas. Or maybe our trellis expands with ministries, which is great, but is still only covering a fraction of our yard. We need something more for those people in the church who have a passion for the culture, but not only the culture, but people care, spiritual growth, family, all of our centers.

I’m asking you to start thinking about the Cultural Mandate and how we can carry it out beyond these doors. We’ve all been given gifts. We all have a passion about something. And we’re all called to good stewardship of the gifts and passions God has given us. If you’re not sure what to do, would you pray? Pray for God to show you what you can do. And would you pray for us, for the Culture Center? And for all the centers. If you have any questions or would like to talk, I’d love to meet with you.

You Want Me to What??? Turn Off My TV???

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (NF 1985, 2005 reprint) - Neil Postman; Penguin, 184 pages.

Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth about the American Voter (NF 2008) - Rick Shenkman; Basic Books, 210 pages.


It’s important to keep in mind that Postman’s book was first published in the days before plasma TVs, hundreds of channels, DVDs, iPods, iPhones, Xbox and PlayStation gaming systems and the Internet. If what Postman said in 1985 is true, that we really have been dumbed down by television, what does that say for us in 2008 with an even wider array of devices for our amusement?

Postman begins with a brief discussion of two highly influential, possibly even prophetic novels, Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World. While Orwell was concerned that people would be deprived of truthful information by those in power, Huxley was concerned that we wouldn’t care about the truth because we’d be too busy being entertained. “Orwell,” Postman says, “feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.”

According to Postman, the Age of Typography began its decline with the invention of Morse code and continued on through radio and television. Yet Postman isn’t saying that changes in media necessarily bring about changes in the structure of the mind or cognitive abilities. “My argument is limited to saying that a major new medium changes the structure of discourse; it does so by encouraging certain uses of the intellect, by favoring certain definitions of intelligence and wisdom, and by demanding a certain kind of content - in a phrase, by creating new forms of truth-telling.”

When the medium changes from word-centered to image-centered, people are given less opportunity to examine and analyze a wide variety of information that runs the risk of being presented out of its original context. It’s also true that information in a print medium can be taken out of context, but with a visually based medium, “facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation.”

Take the television news, for example. Newscasters present news stories with serious, sometimes urgent attention and concentration, but it isn’t long before someone says, “And now, this...”, signaling that it’s time to focus on the next story, relegating the previous one into the realm of the irrelevant.

Yet television goes to great lengths to assure viewers that by watching, they can learn all they need to know about political figures, especially presidential candidates. This idea is a central focus of Rick Shenkman’s new book Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth about the American Voter.

According to Shenkman, the average American voter has not absorbed the basic facts about basic political issues. We embrace misinformation and myth, largely because we haven’t gathered the facts and given them careful thought. Has this happened because we watch television more than we read newspapers, or is there more to it than that? What does it say about us when only “1 in 4 Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment, but more than half of Americans can name at least two members” of The Simpsons?

Is the mythologizing of history to blame? Or is it our reliance on sound bites and thirty-second news clips? And are the newspapers really a more reliable source of information? Can we trust public opinion polls (plus or minus three percent)?

You see it all the time: Democrats pointing fingers at Republicans, Republicans pointing at Democrats, each blaming the other for the current mess we’re in. Yet, as Shenkman states, you never see either side pointing the finger at the American people. The wisdom of the American people (the most informed people in the world, after all) is sacred, not to be questioned.
Shenkman asks,

Why had The People elected to the presidency persons of both political parties wholly lacking in foreign policy experience, and not just once as in the case of George W. Bush, but over and over and over again? Why had The People taken so little interest in international issues that both their media and their leaders felt compelled through the years to limit public debate about foreign policy? Why did The People not pay attention to developments in Afghanistan and the Middle East? And why did they not remember the history of the Middle East - and their country’s role in rearranging the affairs of that region’s countries, putting in power tyrants such as the Shah and conniving to keep in power dictators like Saddam?

Again, we are reluctant to confront our myths. But how can we confront them when we’re surrounded with news of Britney’s custody settlement and Angelina’s twins? Sure, you can find out Obama’s and McCain’s stands on foreign policy, but you might have to dig a little.

Still, Shenkman believes we are not too far gone (or, rather, too far stupid). There is hope and maybe reading Amusing Ourselves to Death and Just How Stupid Are We? is a good first step.