Author: William Romanowski (living)
Genre: Arts
Difficulty: 2 - Easy
Another previously written review:
When The Passion of the Christ came out, I remember talking with a non-Christian friend of mine. He remarked that he found it puzzling that many Christians would enthusiastically promote the movie, and yet condemn other movies like Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill for their violence. ‘I don’t understand it; I thought the issue of violence was important to Christians,’ he said.
When you stop to think about it, it is puzzling. Many of us struggle with the need to find culturally relevant ways of presenting the gospel, ways that are faithful to our worldview as Christians but have a broader audience than the Left Behind books. William D. Romanowski’s book, Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Cultue (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2001) is an excellent foray into the heart of that discussion. Christians can never completely escape culture, he says, and so they need to think critically about the issues surround the culture they condemn, consume, and appropriate. Romanowski writes:
"I approach the popular arts, then, as part of the historical unfolding of God’s creation. They do no lie outside God’s judgment – or beyond God’s redemption…The challenge is to discover what it means for Christians to be faithful to God and responsible to their neighbor through the popular arts."(pg. 20)
This responsibility leads us not only to question the kind of popular art that is deemed ‘secular’ but also, Romanowski affirms, the art that lies inside our own culture as evangelicals. Often, in their desire to harness the popular arts for the kingdom, Christians promote art forms that look and sound like the broader culture, but have a Christian content and message. Romanowski turns a critical gaze on worship music as an example of this kind of accommodation:
"Many praise and worship songs, for example, can be criticized for privatizing faith and promoting values associated with American notions of individualism. Some of these songs encourage world flight instead of Christian cultural engagement and can undermine community and accountability beyond one’s self." (pg. 70)
Besides, we too often forget that the Christian culture industry is still driven by marketing and profit: “Is it any surprise that the Christian music industry is largely populated with young attractive ‘music ministers’… who can appeal to the ‘white, middle-class customers’ who purchase most Christian music?”(pg. 82) Despite the ‘Christianized’ content, the industry is still driven by the need to market a product, irregardless of the merits that product may or may not have.
This is the main point Romanowski wants to make – that whether we are interacting with secular or sacred culture, we need to keep our ‘eyes wide open’ to its message and philosophical implications. Popular culture, whether it is produced in a Christian atmosphere or not, can offer meaning and exploration into the common themes of humanity – even if they don’t answer all the questions.
As Christians, it is so much easier to interact with material that does provide all of the answers; we are more comfortable with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe than with Harry Potter because the themes are much clearer to us. But we have to face the fact that other people – particularly those outside the church – may understand the themes of Harry Potter far more readily.
To that end, Romanowski offers some helpful perspectives on interpreting and critiquing popular culture in the Church. Is there a place for melodrama? Should movies always have a happy ending? These kinds of questions and more are raised as he walks through a cultural landscape of movies, television, and music. Walking through movies like Schindler’s List and Pretty Woman, Romanowski points the necessity of thinking critically about movies: “To be good critics, Christians have to be able to discern the cultural values that inform characterizations, drive stories, and determine acceptable resolutions and be able to evaluate these according to Christian principles.”(pg. 123) (Fear not - Romanowski offers two excellent appendices on the practical aspects of how this is accomplished for the unpracticed).
Romanowski sets out to prove a philosophical point – popular culture is inherent in being human, is a fruitful avenue of discussion, and can even inform our faith. To that end, he pushes hard – perhaps a little too hard – against perspectives that protest against the involvement of Christians in the world of popular culture. He assumes that people will simply agree with his perspectives, and moves quickly through his arguments leaving little room for disagreement. But his point is one that must be noted: popular culture demands a response from the Christian community. How can we, as believing Christians, be faithful to the call to be ‘in the world, but not of it’? It is a question that bears a great deal of thought, and there is no better place to start thinking about it than Eyes Wide Open.
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