Week 9, to KM:

You really processed a lot of information from the book Inventing Popular Culture, but I'd like to respond to one idea in particular which you discussed.

You emphasized strongly the need for Christians to be active and involved in popular culture, in order to influence it with the Gospel. I'm not sure I would go as far as you did to say that we as Jesus-followers should (or even can) "invent a new, powerful, and hybridized culture" as a way of "controlling them" (meaning contemporary cultures?). That, I believe, is essentially what Constantine did, and what the Crusaders attempted to do. I don't think that the Gospel and the Christian worldview will ever again be dominant enough in global culture for Jesus-followers to be able to fully invent an entirely new culture themselves.

However, I do believe that if we are strategic about the ways the Gospel is presented (subtly and artfully more then directly and didactically) through global media, Christ-followers can have a very strong impact on the changing and developing global culture. While I don't believe we can be solely responsible or in control of the final outcome, we can hopefully influence it strongly enough that we provide space for kingdom values to be represented, embodied and respected as one of the many cultural voices that will come together in the coming hybridization.

Perhaps you could offer some specific suggestions of how we might influence culture by "using global media for the Gospel," or find some examples of people who are, and add that to our wiki.