WHITNEY CURTIS | news editor

Andy Crouch of "Christianity Today" visits APU to discuss issues of culture.

The question of how Christians engage with culture is a crucial question for institutions like APU,” editorial director for the Christian Vision Project of Christianity Today International Andy Crouch said.

On Monday, Sept. 24, Crouch was invited to APU to facilitate a conversation between professors, faculty and students about how Christians should accurately connect with culture. In this discussion he introduced his thoughts about Christians becoming “culture makers for the common good.”

“He’s a cutting edge thinker,” special advisor to President Wallace, Dr. Andrea McAleenan said. “I’m trying to bring in a series of thought leaders to engage the university in dialogue about important issues facing us,” McAleenan said.

In the Monday luncheon, attended by numerous professors and faculty members, Crouch began explaining his views on culture by giving a small history lesson. Crouch stated four different postures the church has taken in the past.

The first of these postures is “condemning culture.” At the start of the 20th century, fundamentalists began to separate themselves from the rest of society. They created institutions and schools separate from their secular counterparts.

“Fundamentalists condemned culture at large as not safe for Christians to participate in,” Crouch said.

However, the WWII generation of evangelicals, aimed to surround themselves with culture. “They became very effective critics of culture,” Crouch said.

Thus, according to Crouch, the second posture that Christians took was “critiquing culture.” Many of these evangelicals studied under Francis Schaeffer, a philosopher and teacher, who taught students how to do so.

Later Christians came to copy culture. During the Jesus movement many Christian musicians copied the sounds of hit secular songs, but transformed the lyrics to have Christian meaning.

“We have to become creators. We have to be cultivators because there are some things in culture that are good that need to be preserved,” Crouch said.

Crouch stated that, though this seemed to be an effective tool for Christians at the time, Christian music was inevitably always behind the secular trends.

Finally Crouch stated that Christians today don’t condemn, critique, or copy culture. Instead, we have moved on to simply consuming it.

The first three postures show intentionality with culture. However, the last posture shows no such intentionality. Christians today seem thoughtless when the subject is brought to mind.

“I feel like young Christians are just fuzzy when you ask them to be intentional with culture,” Crouch said.

Crouch believes that none of these postures ever really affect the whole or display a Biblical picture of how Christians should interact with culture.

Crouch’s argument is sound. Many times Christians are too wrapped up in critiquing, condemning, copying or consuming culture to realize that the world, in discussion, does not respect Christians as culture-makers. Christians are not commonly credited with attributing lasting pieces of art, language, music or any other significant thing to culture.

“Does society see us as a people that are distinctive and devoted to the common good?” Crouch said. “[No,] we are a copy culture for a private good. I think that’s how we’re perceived.”

Crouch’s ideas compel a person to ask the question, “What can I do, then, to cultivate and create?”

Crouch encourages Christians to offer something new to the market.

“People create new cultural goods; that reshapes culture.”

When the forum was opened up for discussion among the audience an interesting point was made that would remind individuals to look around themselves in order to understand what needs to come next.

“We are embedded in it. We can not think, we can not act outside of culture,” Chair of the English Department Dr. David Esselstrom said.