Today in "Chuck Colson is Dumb"

It's kind of sad that someone can publish that kind of garbage in a book that is attempting (and failing) to parody on a man who called Fundamentalist Evangelicals to crawl out of their cultural gutter and actually engage popular culture.

Well judging by your life he might be right.... oooooh ZING!

Rock music is subjective, emotional and sensual. So is pretty much all of human life. I'm going out on a limb and saying I'm in favor of it.

Quick, kids, stash your Third Day albums before Mom comes home!

Why you have Third Day albums in the first place is beyond me.

Actually I don't. But still, ryan, don't be a nazi.

And on the Third Day, God created mediocre rhythm guitarists.

"by its very form"? Which form? The 12-bar blues form? Or the symphonic form? Punk? Jamband? (The latter is without form, and void.)

Duh. Very form. The answer was right in front of me. Yeah, that very form is encouraging of the very qualities he mentions.

This brings to mind one of my favorite pieces of advice to would-be musicologists: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." If those in, as they say, the trade, are proscribed from it, what business at all does this yuck have even coming close with his ignorant pen?

To paraphrase Walter Sobchak: Chuck, you're out of your element.

What types of music don't "encourage a mentality that is subjective, emotional, and sensual?"

This statement is sooo broad it is utterly meaningless.

Precisely.

(Kicks a rock, triggering immediate subjective and emotional reactions)

Thus I refute Colson.

*stares at diet coke can, strugging to objectify it, can't, gets pissed off*

thus I refute Colson

But pop culture, as a whole, is pretty junky. It may be a controversial opinion, but I think we'd all be better off if we absorbed less of it.

Evan, the problem is Colson doesn't know what pop culture is. Wilco, The Sopranos, and a dozen other popular things are considered "pop" culture. Colson's problem is he's uneducated and therefor has an extremely shallow approach to culture. The debate isn't "either Colson is good or Brittney Spears is good", its that "Brittney Spears is dumb and so is Colson because he can't see beyond his own nose or what he watched on mtv."

It reminds me of Ken Myers' dismissal of the Beach Boys as bubblegum music (did he hear Pet Sounds?). Statements like this just expose how knowledgeless these "experts" are. Did you know Colson himself has very little to do with his books, and especially with his column in Christianity Today? His staff researches and writes everything. He basically just signs off on all of it.

Funny line award: "Colson's problem is he's uneducated..." - in what? pop culture? I hope I'm that kind of stupid too...

I am no Colson fan, (save the prison fellowship ministry and his opposition to hard time for non-violent criminals) but don't measure his education or "shallow approach to culture" by his inability to appreciate WILCO.

I shiver every time someone tries to explain why these are the darkest time for our culture...but I also shiver when 20-something scooter-punks (term of endearment) start name calling folks who do stuff differently. (Unless you want to bash on Dobson, I’m cool with that.)

Again, the problem is you have the wrong definition of pop culture. I encompases so much more than what you see on MTV or the latest popcorn blockbuster.

and if you notice, I also think Colson is dumb because he can't appreciate the Sopranos. I can add some more stuff to the list, largely because I surmise Colson cannot appreciate things that are outside of pop culture, like fine art, literature, good Kentucky Bourbon, etc. Colson's a fundamentalist, his entire mindset/wordview is antagonistic to things outside of his immediate little *family*.

Further, notice that I just don't consider Colson dumb, I considering him wrong. I still strugging with the whole "well, they just do life differently than you" thing. I still spend alot of time in the mode of cultural/moral deconstruction, but after awhile, in rare moments, I like to project all the leftover modernist/enlightenment angst in my gut onto somebody who probably deserves it.

like these guys. And no, I don't think Colson is on part with the racists at Little Geneva, largely because they're far more intelligent than he is, and conseqently far more insidious and evil.

Finally, you can take your terms of endearment elsewhere, seriously.

I guess I just don't get your insistence that he is "stupid, dumb, uneducated and not intelligent." I know very few people who go to Brown and George Washington on merit and not cause their dad is important, then grow up to be the president's right hand man and leader of the president's secret gestapo. How is that stupid or dumb? wrong? YES, but not stupid.

He admits that the power corrupted him and he can no longer be trusted with positions of authority. I think many people like him, who flew so close to the sun, swing so far the other way so as not to get burned again. Hence his fundamentalism.

But...as I noted before, consider his works like the Body, his attempt to bring some reconciliation between protestants and catholics on common issues of mercy, and his amazing prison ministry. I am sure time in the slammer and spending time with family members of prisoners on a regular basis has given him a "real world" education, beyond what Covenant and Chattanooga have done for a lot of other people.

There are literally thousands of poor and desperate inmates who have had their lives and souls changed because of the good work of Colson, despite his fundamentalism. So he attacks pop culture and rock music?! So what, he's old, that's what old people do. But to use terms like "stupid, dumb, not-intelligent, and uneducated?" I know you have the ability to deconstruct his understanding of pop culture without reducing it to name-calling. (And side note...does pop culture really need a vigorous defense?)

And I am very sorry for the term of endearment, which didn’t endear. I meant no disrespect. (Name calling, even when innocent kinda hurts hu? Makes you think…)

If only Colson would stick to his prison ministry stuff, unfortunately he's writing worldview & "how to approach culture" stuff, and a good many evangelicals are drinking the cool-aid.

In those terms, the ones put forward by Colson in his book/essays etc., he's uneducated. I don't tell him how to do prison ministry, and it'd be nice if he didn't try to educate the Church on how to deal with the World.

It's not as if Colson came up with these ideas himself. A lot of the church fathers believed the same thing - Augustine, Tertullian, etc... everybody until the 4th century, probably.
Clement says that the chromatic musical form is too carnal, and should be forsaken by Christians. Sounds a lot like Colson.
Is he wrong? Yes, but It would be hard to call him uneducated, stupid, and dumb. We don't call him those things because he was right about a lot of other stuff and deserves some respect.

The whole discussion is muddled by use of the term "popular culture," which has come to be defined in religious circles as "any work of art that young people shake their bodies to." It's merely an insult, and as such can be safely ignored.

The actual question is whether church leaders have a right to declare entire categories of art (the 4/4 beat, or maybe sychronized swimming) as verboten. Church precident shows that such perogatives have long been exercised -- and in nearly every case been challenged or subverted by artists within and without the dominant parish. (Michaelangelo's David is not exactly a study of humble faith, in case you haven't noticed.)

However, the American Protestant church and the current artistic climate have almost no intersection. Neither has any practical responsibility for the other. So the objections of evangelical leaders have grown more strident even as they drift away from specificity or relevance. And artists remember Jesus only as an oath -- or use him as a convenient dispenser of second-hand purity, e. g. Kanye West.

agreed...with all above.

Josiah, I understand and grant your point re: the definition of "pop culture." However, I think unthinking consumption of even indie and hip pop culture can be bad for us as Christians as well as indulging in the latest Britany Spears single. Good aesthetics (not-equal-to) good moral values. I know in my experience the problems have been manifold: I have valued works of art by unbelievers in such a way as to become blinded to their flaws (my admiration for Kerouac's writing leading me to be attracting to his bohemian lifestyle, etc.), I have used my knowledge of certain cultural artifacts as a badge of honor vs. the ignorant masses (Wilco, "Pet Sounds," insert whatever you want in here, it can happen with anything...) I think we Reformed can use our twin mantras: "All of life is spiritual" and "Redeeming culture for Christ" to actually conform to the prevailing pattern of cultural life and justify our indolence and unthinking consumption - justitia civilis in the words of Bonhoeffer (The Cost of Discipleship).

Fundamentalist or no, the warning of 1 John still applies: "Do not love the world or the things in the world." That's a scary verse for me, because I know that outwardly my attitude and tastes are often much like my non-Christian peers, those with whom I grew up. I don't want to retreat from them, but I want to be focused in an entirely different direction and I think that necessarily that will issue in particular behaviors, though I'm not sure what exactly that looks like yet, and I'm sure it's different for different people. Still, Francis Schaeffer called people to be aware of what the Beatles, Bergman, etc. were putting out, not necessarily to seek it out as entertainment. There was a missional drive to his cultural engagement that I think is lacking in most of our Reformed youth culture (e.g. my Covenant College peer group) today. Christ's words about the impossibility of serving two masters - Him and money - work just as well if you substitute another good, such as culture, that people can value more than Him. Is He saying to us today, you can't serve Me and be a hipster; you can't have a foot in both camps? Be aware certainly; but be aware to acknowledge and confront, perhaps not always, but at least sometimes.

Finally, I don't see how you can legitimately call Colson a "fundamentalist." I haven't read much by him, but I think he's more of a mainstream evangelical, because he's not advocating cultural disengagement and separation. To be a fundamentalist these days one has to have one's head in the sand, not simply fail to endorse whatever cultural icons others in the Christian community hold dear.

"It's modernist + wrong + stupid to think that if somebody is "wrong" in their statements/beliefs/etc. that they're somehow stupid. It doesn't follow."

Alright Ed, you win this one. I concede. Dangit.

It seems unfair, Evan, to blame cultural items for your misuse of them. If I use a Sufjan Stevens b-side to confirm my sense of superiority, or commit idolotry at the shrine of Martin Scorsese, I don't see how that's the fault of the musician or the director. I could have done the same thing with a bottle of chardonnay, or a baseball card -- or the work of the most conservative, world-shirking theologian.

Your second paragraph is an eloquent summary of the Schaeffer-influenced approach to culture. But it's a tack that I find lifeless and unworkable. To "engage" culture by analyzing, dicing and judging it is not to have seen it all. Any work of art requires surrender, a trusting of some part of yourself to the work of another person. It is entering into the suffering of the world, into the hopes of other souls, into the nearly boundless pleasures of language, image and sound. There are a thousand ways to do this wrong. There are likely no ways to do it right. But I find this submission a tangible route toward loving God.

I may be entirely, dangerously mistaken. (No point in telling me so. I plan to find out on my own.) But if such an approach to culture is unacceptable, I see the only consistent alternative to be asceticism. Which is not an option to be cynically dismissed: it offers holistic community, authentic self-denial, and a focus on the divine. It also holds a place for the intellect without reducing all experience to thought, as the Reformed approach to culture too often does.

Allow me a cruel chuckle....

Fine fine fine. I've got a cookie here for you too (seriously). You should stop by and pick it up on your way home.

But to clarify, I do mention that I think he is both wrong and dumb, and I don't make a logical connect between the two. Of course, that my just be implicit in what I was saying.

Francis Schaeffer did seek out pop culture for entertainment. His son Frank writes in "Sham Pearls for Real Swine" that Francis legitimately enjoyed Led Zeppelin and Frank Zappa--he wasn't just trying to fit in, as so many Schaeffer-admirers-turned-youth-pastors do.

Thanks, Aaron, for your insightful reply. This is definitely something I struggle with. How far can one surrender to the aesthetic work of someone who is not surrendered to Christ? (In the words of Led Zeppelin, "Let the music be your master/Will you heed the master's call?") And the same question in opposite form: are works of art by Christians qualitatively different in some way simply because they are by Christians? I think I might explore this issue in a blog post sometime soon, and would appreciate your thoughts.

"Authentic self-denial, and a focus on the divine" - that's a lifestyle I could be proud of. The thing is, as it is, I go halfway. I do nothing as I ought. I'm neither enjoying the good things of this life as much as I could or abstaining from them in order to focus on something higher. And I'm aware that you can do it with chardonnay or baseball cards - I guess the thing is, I'm using an even broader definition of cultural than works of art/entertainment, which seems to be the current going definition. Sociologically, I believe, all products of humanity are considered to be part of, and reflective of, culture. Thus, when the Apostle John refers to the "world" I think he's referring to the entire world-system (culture) that exists in opposition to Christ, and so his warning applies to it all.

So there's the antithesis. Yet also we have common grace, "All things created by God are good, and nothing is to be rejected, for it is sanctified by the Word and prayer." One could perhaps say that applies only to foods, etc., which are the products of nature, but the context seems to be one of cultural practice, and thus it has application here as well.

So somewhere we need to find the balance. I like to think it has something to do with mental orientation (possessing as though you possess not, that sort of thing), but don't want to appear to be copping out. Anyway, the problem with that is unobservability. How then would I know that you're enjoying the world's culture inasmuch as it is a gift of God and savoring what is good in it, rather than adopting its fashions wholesale and beginning to conform in thought to its pattern?