Eddy has created an online book club of sorts to discuss Andy Crouch’s new work, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling. I first encountered Crouch’s writing when he wrote for and edited the excellent, but now defunct magazine re:genereation Quarterly. The jacket of Culture Making’s states, “It is not enough to condemn culture. Nor is it sufficient merely to critique culture, copy culture or consume culture. The only way to change culture is to create culture.” This post will discuss the book’s introduction and first chapter.

Introduction:
Crouch says that Christians and their relation to culture have been in the stages of childhood or youth. Childhood’s essence is innocence and youth’s essence is awareness. He calls us to become adults with regard to culture and the essence of adulthood is responsibility. The Church has gone from innocence of culture to awareness of it and we seem to enjoy that place where we can critique and engage. But Crouch believes we need to be at the task of making culture.

Many criticized H. Richard Neibuhr’s seminal work, Christ and Culture for not offering a definition of culture, and Crouch tries to avoid that mistake. He says, “We talk about culture as if it were primarily a set of ideas when it is primarily a set of tangible goods.” (10) He also discloses his influences, namely the Dutch Reformed theologian turned statesman Abraham Kuyper who called people to cultural responsibility. I have Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism somewhere, but I haven’t read it yet.

For Crouch, culture needs to be created in the power of God. “Culture is not finally about us, but about God.” (13)