Tuesday, 23 March 2010
DMR Format Change
DMR is changing its posting format from a monthly issue to a by the review post. Please check in for new posts regularly.
Culture Making - Andy Crouch
Editor's note: This review was to be included in the last issue of DMR, but due to a lack of my organization, it never actually got included. Sincere apologies to Jim Jordan as his submission is greatly appreciated.
Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling - Andy Crouch
InterVarsity Press (2008)
1st part available free online:
http://www.ivpress.com/title/exc/3394-sample-1.pdf
http://www.ivpress.com/title/exc/3394-sample-2.pdf
Andy Crouch’s 2008 book Culture Making has received positive reviews and multiple book-of-the-year awards touting it as a great step forward in the field of Christianity and culture, but little has been written on the book’s relevance to cross-cultural missions. Is this work significant to cross-cultural missions? Should it be recommended reading for those who serve in missions? This review will examine these questions and show what Culture Making does and doesn’t offer to the field of missions.
Culture Making is simultaneously a readable introduction to the topic of Christianity and culture as well as a dramatic recasting of everything that has been said on this topic for the last several decades. Crouch has an ambitious three part goal of changing our understanding of culture itself, the biblical view of culture, and the way of transforming culture. Crouch largely accomplishes these goals by balancing complex definitions of his concepts with engaging illustrations of these concepts, resulting in a deep yet readable narrative.
Those who are familiar with H. Richard Niebuhr’s seminal work Christ & Culture will find in Crouch a reaffirmation of the church’s calling to transform culture along with a new concept of gestures and postures, which provides a more dynamic and nuanced understanding the relationship between Christianity and culture than Niebuhr’s five types. The title of the book reflects just one application of Crouch’s comprehensive framework of understanding culture: that in order to transform culture, Christians must go beyond condemning, and critiquing culture and must create culture as well.
Since it is well understood that culture plays a critical roll in cross-cultural missions, it will be helpful for any missionary to read what has quickly grown a reputation as the best book on Christianity and culture written in many years. However, there are a few caveats: Crouch is not writing for a missions audience and so his examples are taken from the context of American culture and his applications focus on American Christianity. His work does reflect an understanding of multiculturalism but doesn’t dwell on this issue. On a practical level, he doesn’t go out of his way to apply his concepts to issues that commonly arise in cross-cultural missions work. Crouch provides a biblical understanding of culture that can be applied in many contexts, but the missions-minded reader will have to do his or her own work of practical application of Crouch’s concepts to their cultural context.
Despite its lack of focus on missions, this book is truly groundbreaking within its scope, and its concepts, when applied to cross-cultural missions, are capable of helping Christians around the world relate to culture in a healthier way.
Jim Jordan lives in Miami, FL in an intentional Christian community and serves as Short Term Coordinator for Latin America Mission (LAM).
Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling - Andy Crouch
InterVarsity Press (2008)
1st part available free online:
http://www.ivpress.com/title/exc/3394-sample-1.pdf
http://www.ivpress.com/title/exc/3394-sample-2.pdf
Andy Crouch’s 2008 book Culture Making has received positive reviews and multiple book-of-the-year awards touting it as a great step forward in the field of Christianity and culture, but little has been written on the book’s relevance to cross-cultural missions. Is this work significant to cross-cultural missions? Should it be recommended reading for those who serve in missions? This review will examine these questions and show what Culture Making does and doesn’t offer to the field of missions.
Culture Making is simultaneously a readable introduction to the topic of Christianity and culture as well as a dramatic recasting of everything that has been said on this topic for the last several decades. Crouch has an ambitious three part goal of changing our understanding of culture itself, the biblical view of culture, and the way of transforming culture. Crouch largely accomplishes these goals by balancing complex definitions of his concepts with engaging illustrations of these concepts, resulting in a deep yet readable narrative.
Those who are familiar with H. Richard Niebuhr’s seminal work Christ & Culture will find in Crouch a reaffirmation of the church’s calling to transform culture along with a new concept of gestures and postures, which provides a more dynamic and nuanced understanding the relationship between Christianity and culture than Niebuhr’s five types. The title of the book reflects just one application of Crouch’s comprehensive framework of understanding culture: that in order to transform culture, Christians must go beyond condemning, and critiquing culture and must create culture as well.
Since it is well understood that culture plays a critical roll in cross-cultural missions, it will be helpful for any missionary to read what has quickly grown a reputation as the best book on Christianity and culture written in many years. However, there are a few caveats: Crouch is not writing for a missions audience and so his examples are taken from the context of American culture and his applications focus on American Christianity. His work does reflect an understanding of multiculturalism but doesn’t dwell on this issue. On a practical level, he doesn’t go out of his way to apply his concepts to issues that commonly arise in cross-cultural missions work. Crouch provides a biblical understanding of culture that can be applied in many contexts, but the missions-minded reader will have to do his or her own work of practical application of Crouch’s concepts to their cultural context.
Despite its lack of focus on missions, this book is truly groundbreaking within its scope, and its concepts, when applied to cross-cultural missions, are capable of helping Christians around the world relate to culture in a healthier way.
Jim Jordan lives in Miami, FL in an intentional Christian community and serves as Short Term Coordinator for Latin America Mission (LAM).
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