We do a lot of writing about popular culture, how it’s unavoidable, and how we should seek to engage and create it in light of both Scripture and the reality that surrounds us. Presumably, you do a lot of reading about it. Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa is organizing a conference where you can hear people speak about those things:
The Christian community tends to respond by either ignoring popular culture or critiquing it moralistically through discussion about popular culture, rather than reflecting on our inescapable existence within it. Even those Christian perspectives that emphasize cultural transformation have a dearth of positive engagement with contemporary manifestations of culture.
This tendency towards “evasion” forms a posture towards popular culture—we pray for it, we decry its excesses—that is at odds with the reality of our being immersed within popular culture: From food to fashion, guitars to guns, and pipe organs to orbiting telecommunication satellites. Every square inch of our lives is saturated by patterns and expressions of popular culture.
To make culture is an inextricable part of our human identity that has too often been ignored within the Christian tradition.
This conference, which will take place at Dordt College on November 1–3, 2012, will explore the Christian tendency to “evade” popular culture. Speakers and presenters will seek answers to questions like: Is it possible to be in the world but not of the world? How can the Christian community sustain the impulse of reformation with regard to the social and cultural aspects of human life? What are the implications of the Christian faith and the hope for “new creation” with regard to the human proclivity to make culture?
Honestly, the rationale for this conference is so dead-on, it makes me want to buy some plane tickets right now. Whether I’ll be able to make it is as of yet undetermined, but you should certainly try to make it yourself. They are also putting out a call for papers for all sorts of different subjects.
