Dick Staub: Shallowness in Popular American Culture
// May 14th, 2007 // Church Life, Movies, Music, Video
Dick Staub is an author and writer who runs the Culture Watch website and has recently written a book called “The Culturally Savvy Christian: A Manifesto for Deepening Faith and Enriching Popular Culture in an Age of Christianity-Lite”. I haven’t read the book, but it looks interesting. I might have to pick up a copy.
Mark Driscoll has done a series of interviews with him. I grabbed this one for you to see.
What do you think about what he says here?
His contention is that American pop culture has reduced itself to the lowest common denominators: money and celebrity.
I can’t tell you how tired I am of hearing about Paris Hilton’s latest escapade, Anna Nicole’s posthumous drama or why Brittany Spears cut her hair and what K-Fed thinks about it. It’s getting very hard to find good music (Christian or otherwise). It’s getting harder and harder to find good movies (I’m talking artistically or morally).
What’s the solution here? Can the Church effectively counter the culture in a way that not only appreciates good art but also injects it with a God-fearing world view? Is it possible?
I think it is.
[tags]pop culture, culture, Paris Hilton, Brittany Spears, celebrity, church, counterculture, Dick Staub, Mark Driscoll[/tags]
Who is this masked man? As a friend of mine Robert Mearns has said time and time again, the boat in the water is good but water in the boat is not.
I guess that is why I appreciated the first couple of books that John Eldredge wrote. As a Christian he convinced me that I could even find relevance in what Bob Dylan wrote or “30 Something” on TV presented.
This guy is right on. I just saw the 3rd Spiderman movie and wonder why it was even made…it didn’t do much for me. It was 2 hours and 20 minutes of special effects and watching the camera work its’ way around almost nothing.
The more I see of Dick Staub the more I like. I’ve got another follow-up to this segment that I plan on posting later this week.
The Quote of the Day:
“American popular culture is overwhelmingly dominated not by art or craft but by superficiality. A lot of Christians are concerned about bad language and nudity in film…I’m actually more concerned about triviality…about the banality of it.”
Read the above statement 10 times out loud. Until this sinks into the evangelical mind we will continue to be irrelevant to the culture that surrounds us.
And what do we find in Christian bookstores? Thomas Kinkade paintings, WWJD? paraphenalia, Joel Osteen’s “Your Best Life Now” bestseller…need I say more? You can’t get more superficial than that.