Reviews for Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends

The average rating for Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-06-27 00:00:00 Pamela Mayer This book was assigned to me as a textbook at Moody Bible Institute. I was only required to read half of it but I enjoyed it so much that I decided to read the rest on my own time. The purpose of this book is to help believers read culture. Culture are our beliefs put into concrete forms (a movie, a product, an idiom etc.). They say: "Christians need to know how to read culture because, first, it helps to know what is forming one's spirit. It helps to be able to name the powers and principalities that vie for the control of one's mind, soul, heart, and strength." Since culture "spreads beliefs, values, ideas, fashions, and practices from one social group to another," it is important to examine cultural texts through a biblical lens. The tools to do this are the mind and the Scriptures. The Scriptures "serve as 'corrective lenses' that enable us to see the world as it really is in the context of God's all-encompassing plan." The brain "should act as a sort of mental immune system, examining cultural ideas as they come in, considering their likely consequences, rejecting the ones that are liable to do harm and accepting those that are apt to help." Each chapter of this book examines a culture text or a cultural trend. The ones covered in this book are: 1) The Safeway checkout line 2) Eminem (the rapper's music) 3) The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 4) Megachurch architecture 5) The movie "Gladiator" 6) Busyness 6) Blogging 7) Transhumanism 8) Fantasy funeral services 9) Weddings. In my opinion, there are three steps to engaging culture and this book is step two of that process. The first step is to gain a biblical worldview (for that, read 'The Universe Next Door' by James Sire). Then the next step is to analyze cultural texts through your biblical worldview (which is what this book teaches). Then the final step is to create culture out of your worldview (for that, read 'Culture Making' by Andy Crouch). These three books together complement one another to help the believer analyze, critique, and create culture.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-01-25 00:00:00 Vissarion Mantzaris Chapter 1: What is Everyday Theology Culture is a work and world of meaning (26). It is a work because it is the result of what humans do freely, not by nature. The products of such work are cultural texts (a text is intentional human action, a work that communicates meaning and calls for interpretation). Culture is a world in the sense that cultural texts create a meaningful environment in which humans dwell both physically and imaginatively (26). It is a lived worldview. Culture is both system and practice, a means through which visions of the meaning of life are expressed, experienced, and explored through cultural texts (27). Culture Communicates. Culture Orients. Culture Reproduces. Culture Cultivates (28ff). Christians must learn to read the Bible and culture alike (35). Is Cultural exegesis without theological presuppositions possible? (40). Four doctrines to keep in mind: Incarnation, General Revelation, Common Grace, Image of God. Good Calvin quote (Institutes 2.2.15): If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God. Pages 44-54 kind of lost me. Methodological Coda: Guidelines for Everyday Theological Interpretation of Culture: 1. Try to comprehend a cultural text on its own terms before you "interpret" it. 2. Attend to what a cultural text is doing as well as saying by clarifying its illocutionary act. 3. Consider the world behind, of, and in front of the cultural text. 4. Determine what "powers" are served by particular cultural texts or trends by discovering whose material interests are served. 5. Seek the "world hypothesis" and/or "root metaphor" implied by a cultural text. 6. Be comprehensive in your interpretation of a cultural text; find corroborative evidence that makes best sense of the whole as well as the parts. 7. Give "thick" descriptions of the cultural text that are nonreductive and sensitive to the various levels of communicative action. 8. Articulate the way of being human to which a cultural text directly or indirectly bears witness and gives commendation. 9. Discern what faith a cultural text directly or indirectly expresses. To what convictions about God, the world, and ourselves does a cultural text and/or trend commit us? 10. Locate the cultural text in the biblical creation-fall-redemption schema and make sure that biblical rather than cultural texts have the lead role in shaping your imagination and hence your interpretative framework for your experience.