Book Review: Culture Making

In line with my increasing interest in Apologetics and the relationship of Christianity/The Church to culture, etc, I've been reading more intentionally into the subject. One of the books that kept coming up is this one, "Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling" by Andy Crouch. Commended (and if you only read this end of this review, rightly so!) on the front by Tim Keller, this is a serious book that really engages with the questions it seeks to answer, and is, in my opinion, successful in putting forth a Christian vision and strategy for culture.

The entirety of Crouch's book is set firmly within the biblical conception of Christianity as a bigger, and indeed the, story. It is both a good introduction and a comprehensive suggestion beyond, the issues of Culture and Christianity. We begin in Part 1: Culture, rightly getting the lay of the land and considering how Culture is created, what it is, and what that might mean for us as individuals. Despite a rather bizarre (though, if you read the book, it does make sense) obsession initially with omelettes, Crouch goes on to very helpfully summarise and explain a lot of the issues and ideas around 'Culture', setting us up for his actual argument and more technical engagement. 

Having seen the lay of the land - and Part 1 closes with helpful analysis of how evangelicals have engaged with culture - Crouch draws us onwards into Part 2: Gospel, which is a wonderful setting of the issues of Culture into the eternal context of the Gospel narrative. He centres, both ultimately and in terms of chapter location - on Jesus. Crouch makes a powerful, counter-cultural-in-the-most-basic-sense observation about Jesus, noting that "“The strangest and most wonderful paradox of the biblical story is that its most consequential moment is not an action but a passion - not a doing but a suffering”. Amen. From Jesus Crouch moves on, through "From Pentecost" to "... To Revelation", closing his examination of the Gospel with the wonderfully title "The Glorious Impossible".

The closing chapters of this fine book fall into Part 3: Calling. Crouch begins with a great sucker-punch to the idealistic individualism of many, "Why We Can't Change the World", wryly and incisively observing that “Changing the world sounds grand, until you consider how poorly we do even at changing our own little lives". It is from this place that, as Crouch observes, we can begin to really think through how the world, and culture, might actually change. These, Crouch writes, are "The Traces of God", and his final three chapters are wonderfully and simply titled "Power", "Community" and "Grace". These traces of God, as Crouch puts it, are echoes of the peculiar Christian claim that, "as unlikely or even scandalous as it often seems, is that God has been involved in culture making from the very beginning". This is not a book about us - but ultimately a book about God. Hence the postscript, "Artist in His Studio", which closes this superb book with a powerful yet practical challenge; "When we are fully able to bear the beauty of God resting upon us, when our work and worship are one, we will live in the eternal now of creators made in the Creator's image. And, once more, it will be very good". I love the imagery in those closing words.

Crouch subtitled this book "Recovering our creative calling", and I hope that for its evangelical readers this book will challenge and catalyse just that. This is an immensely rich and readable book, well worth the time to engage fully with its well-written 250+ pages. I'd recommend it highly to creative and artistic Christians, students involved in Arts degrees, those studying Theology, and anyone involved in Church leadership where cultural engagement is key. This is helpful, encouraging, and future-focused book.

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