Takeaway: Culture matters. Culture needs cultivation. Beauty is central to combating utilitarian theology.
Makoto Fujimura is a gift to the church. He is now on my must read list. I do not particularly need to be convinced of the basic argument in Culture Care, culture matters. But the framing of culture in similar terms to environmental care I think makes a lot of sense in helping the reader to understand that culture is neither static nor inherently good or bad.
Culture is cultivated and if we want a culture that reflects truth and beauty need to have Christians that understand truth and beauty creating to influence culture. Fujimura starts with the assumption that Christians should be interacting with culture and creating. He is not particularly interested in creating culture where Christian is used as an adjective (Christian music, Christian movies, etc.).
A Facebook friend of mine, who teaches communication theory, was answering a question yesterday about when the idea of “˜Christian’ as adjective started. She suggested it started initially in the mid 1940s, but really took hold in the 1960s (and I think becoming entrenched commercially in the 1980s.)
When I think of literary examples of good literature that reflects Christian concepts of truth and beauty, I tend to think of books that were pre-1960s. They were designed as literature, not as Christian literature. CS Lewis, Tolkien, Sayers were some of the last authors that emerged before the subculture trend of Christian creating emerged (and it is probably not incidental that my mind goes to British examples).
Fujimura is writing as one of the prime current examples of an artist that is creating art. It is well received in the art world as art, not as Christian art. I think his influence is being felt widely among Christians that are creators. Increasingly Christian creators are rejecting the Christian market, for both theological and commercial reasons.
I listened to this on audiobook because it was part of a christianaudio.com sale. But I will pick this up and read it again in print. Fujimura deserves to be read at least twice.
The basic ideas of Culture Care are not particularly revolutionary. But that does not make them any less important because those ideas are still deeply needed. Beauty needs to be part of a robust theology, not just because some people can be evangelized through art. But because beauty is part of how we were created to understand God. A theology that does not understand the importance of beauty probably has been overly contaminated with utilitarianism.
Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for Our Common Life by Makoto Fujimura Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook, Christianaudio.com MP3 Audiobook