Popologetics: Popular Culture in Christian Perspective (P&R, 2012)

Ted Turnau

A book review by Todd D. Baucum

It was with eager delight that I read on the back cover endorsements by men who were noted commentators and cultural critics engaged in “discerning the signs of the times” with the truth of the Christian message.  This book is rightly touted a primer on doing apologetics in the context of popular media and is not a work of popular apologetics designed at the entry level.   That is not to say this book should not be read by all Christians interested in how our music, art, films and new technology are conveying alternate worldviews, but the reader should be armed with a background in the history of debates concerning Christian engagement in culture (and current ones too).   Ted Turnau, a teaching fellow at the International Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, and a professor at Charles University in Prague, is coming at this debate with a decisive angle of full engagement and immersion in a host of various subcultures of our Western society.  

There is much about this book that is commendable and interesting.   One mark of a good book is the engagement of thought on various ideas, and Turnau takes the reader through careful reflection at the intersection of sociology, philosophy, and theology.   Years of teaching and dialogue on these issues come clearly through on each page.   The footnotes show careful scholarship and interaction with whom he disagrees.   It is evident that Turnau takes a much more positive attitude towards pop culture than most writers, giving his critique on many Reformed thinkers on cultural apologetics.

First, consider his ambitious agenda which is covered in three main parts in the book.   The first four chapters lay out the groundwork of a “theology of Popular culture”, where he defines key concepts such as “popular culture” and “world-view”, which the reader will find immensely helpful in knowing from what platform the author argues.   For Turnau, popular culture, “made up of cultural works whose media, genres, or venues tend to be widespread and widely received in our everyday world,” is the main conveyer of worldviews today.  Drawing in some part from James Sire’s seminal understanding of worldview, Turnau looks at what makes up a worldview from the roots of presuppositions, the trunk of a world-story and the branches of a life philosophy that gives fruit to beliefs and behaviors.    I thought this tree analogy very creative and instructive.  The teacher in Turnau is keen on keeping his readers on track as he progresses with his arguments.   So, while I found the metaphor a good one, the distinctions between presuppositions, culture and meta-narratives I thought to be at times unguarded.  

Culture is neither in itself good or bad, it is neutral, but as a feature of the byproduct of fallen creatures it is bound up in sin.  All culture this side of Eden, is to be judged by the true standard of God’s word and is found wanting.   The ability not just to see the lens of culture, but to turn it inward is extremely important.  Turnau want us to engage in the cultural conveyers of our postmodern world with understanding, but the temptation would be to lose sight that all culture needs the correction of the Gospel.    It is true that because of a Christian view of creation, art and culture making are part of the Christian calling in life.  The Dutch Reformers were especially good at laying hold on this particular truth, even to the more recent work of H.R. Rookmaaker, whose essays on art and Christianity laid down a robust Reformed theology of aesthetics that has yet to be improved.   One wonders why Turnau did not engage more with this work.  Turnau is also not as strong in the implication of sin in all its nature upon our world and culture.   On page 60, he seems to put more weight on the effects of sin in our human relationships and in the culture, rather than our relationship with God.   The consequences of this ontological shattering of the image of God, are indeed social and psychological, but they are primarily spiritual in scope.  For purposes of apologetics, a world-view lens is a way to make sense of where people are: it is diagnostic and descriptive.    Understanding a person’s worldview or a song, or a film is not simply however for our classification, so as to label things as “existentialist or nihilist”, but to help those lost in the darkness of manipulation to see the light of God’s truth in Jesus Christ.   Much of popular media and arts are aimed not at illumination but at manipulation.  

Over and over, Turnau seeks to hold on the value of propositional truth with the need to see truth as more complex, reflecting the exuberant contours of the human heart.   This is an admirable goal, but the reader is left at times with the impression that the new hermeneutics of narrative thinkers, like Paul Ricoeur, quoted six times in footnotes by Turnau would imply more than just a corrective balance to Enlightenment rationalism.   One wonders where this would lead, if not rooted in the objective reality of God’s truth.

In the second section, Turnau offers what he considers a better and more positive posture towards popular culture and critiques what seems to be the mainstream disdain among Reformed thinkers regarding pop culture.   Putting the likes of Ken Myers, Neil Postman and Doug Wilson together, he critiques their elitist approach to pop culture.  Myers and Wilson write along similar topics, such as the recovery of the good, the beautiful and the true in a declining Western culture.   Wilson writes to reclaim a “catholic” comprehensive view of the arts in a Christian culture, but one could argue he seems more Anabaptist in approach.   Myers sees much in pop culture that reveals its loss of beauty and truth rather than as a bridge to engage in the culture, a lament of our times, if you will.  Turnau makes the case that these negative approaches to pop culture tend towards elitism or “moralistic criticism” (borrowed from social critic Romanowski).   The arguments were engaging and thought provoking, but not persuasive.   High culture, if to use his phrase was always meant to be aimed at the masses, especially after the Renaissance and the Reformation.   Mozart wrote music for the common people to enjoy.  Handel, Bach and Beethoven were composers for the people to both enjoy the gift of music and to express praise to God.  They brought music out from the court (among the aristocracy) and into the concert halls and the churches to be enjoyed by workers, merchants and all fellow citizens of God’s kingdom.   Turnau would do well to remember Rookmacher’s caution to keep a “prophetic pessimism” towards culture for indeed culture making slips ever so easily into idol making.   Solomon’s temple was built with the help of pagan craftsmen, but the builders of the temple were clear about where culture influences stopped and obedience to God’s word began.   This is not to say that this book shows the pitfalls of both total engagement and the temptation to retreat to higher ground.   He just sees more danger of those who are on the cultural retreat side of things.  One keeps, or should keep, remembering that the great classical works, and books of Dostoevsky and the music of Handel were “popular” both in appeal and in consumption, but the culture in which such works prospered no longer holds sway on us in the West anymore.    

In Part Three, Turnau outlines a constructive strategy for engaging pop culture for Christians.    Most Christians today find themselves in a new world called Twitterverse, and a growing venue of cultural expressions.   There are very few wise guides out there to help believers navigate this new territory.  The value of this book is that it begins that engagement with some thought provoking challenges.   This is the important note that is sounded in the author’s appeal for answering the call for believers to take the Gospel into this fast paced realm of our society.  Let’s just do it with Gospel discernment.