Do artists take themselves too seriously?

Do we take artists seriously enough?

These are the questions I’ve had coming out of my post last week, where I offered a few preliminary thoughts (in response to a well-intentioned but generally frustrating video from the Gospel Coalition) on the question of whether artists serve some kind of “priestly” role in contemporary (pop) culture… and if so, if such a thing is altogether self-serving or may in fact serve a greater purpose as far as “theology and culture” is concerned. Following the twists and turns of the original video – and with those two opening questions in mind – I would also like to consider the artist as “prophet.” Is this a role that artists should avoid or embrace, and is their “prophetic” voice one we (especially as the church) need to heed?

A recent article in SPIN magazine noted the fact that protest music, even in the age of Occupy Wall Street, is “stuck in the past”: old-school icons like Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan still rule when it comes to sticking it to the man, while the past decade has seen “clear, strong musical dissent dwindle to a whisper.” It’s a point worth considering; the other day I watched Sinead O’Connor’s infamous SNL appearance from the 1980s where she ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul II, after a provocative (and very “in-your-face”) performance of “War”… it’s hard to imagine something like that happening on American television today. However, one might profitably point out that even if Sinead O’Connor, U2 and Rage Against the Machine are yesterday’s news, advances in technology have allowed an even broader range of artists in all media (music, painting, film, dance, theatre, new media) to speak out in strong tones against societal ills both on and off stage. Many are able to do so without sacrificing artistic quality – in fact, having a strong “message” may enhance, rather than sideline, the aesthetic dimensions of their work. Although, as SPIN points out, this generation may not have its own Bob Dylan or Chuck D, political and social “protest” still drives much wonderful creativity in all media, from street art a la Banksy to provocative performance pieces to thousands of YouTube videos (though of varying quality!) creatively responding to particular issues.

But are artists “prophets”? Or is such a designation only appropriate when it comes to intra-religious issues? There is, to be sure, a difference between “protest” and “prophecy” when it comes to art. The biblical prophets called for reform in the context of corporate repentance and divine judgment; protests may invoke the language of eschatological judgment (crumbling edifices, smashed-out Starbucks windows) but don’t usually frame their message in terms of turning back to a benevolent deity. (Although perhaps “repentance” is not such a foreign concept when it comes to effective protest – the most fruitful resistance movements are arguably those that call for “conversion,” a complete about-face from one way of doing things to another.) However, secular art that is “protesting” something (can we call it “protestant” art?) aims – just like the OT prophets  – to challenge the status quo with what Walter Brueggeman calls a “counter world,” denouncing the present reality in the strongest terms possible and offering up an alternate vision of society. This twofold “prophetic” task is one for which the arts are particularly well suited. Firstly, one can creatively “negate” and subvert through sign and symbol in a unique way:

Art may have a prophetic function, laying bare perceptions we would otherwise have missed – but prophetic in the sense that, like prophetic disclosures through other media, it arises out of a vision of reality that reflects its negation. (John Dillenberger, A Theology of Artistic Sensibilities, 244.)

And secondly, on the more positive side, art can also offer us an alternate vision of reality, apocalyptically transforming and rehabilitating our imaginations. Are artists, then, “prophets,” bringing a challenging message from God to the people? We might ask the same question in reverse: are prophets a certain type of “artists”? (Perhaps we can think of Ezekiel, Hosea and John the Baptist as effective and subversive “performance artists.”)

I’m not sure the Gospel Coalition pastors would dispute any of this outright… their specific qualm seems to be, put plainly, Derek Webb. Webb is a singer-songwriter, formerly of the band Caedmon’s Call, whose past albums have criticized the Western evangelical church for its complicity in violence, poverty and oppression and who is thus, in the words of the video, “deadly serious” about presenting himself as a prophet. Following Webb on Twitter, it’s hard to think of him as “deadly serious” about anything… but nonetheless, it is true that many of his songs (“Rich Young Ruler” and “I Don’t Want To Fight” are two examples) explicitly “protest” particular injustices and call the church to accountability. Webb sings as a Christian criticizing his own tradition – speaking from within, implicating himself, rather than the “outsider” stance of the secular protester – and so calling his art “prophetic” in the context of the Christian church rather than simply “protest music” seems somehow appropriate. While he certainly does not present himself as God’s mouthpiece – as did the biblical prophets – he is suggesting that injustice and oppression are things God is concerned about, and ought to trouble us too.

The GC seems to think the mantle of prophet is too heavy for an artist to bear. I agree that artists are “artists” first and foremost, rather than “priests” or “prophets.” However, undermining the “prophetic” role that all artists, even ‘secular’ ones, can play in calling church and society to imagine a more just future by suggesting that having a “message” is a form of self-aggrandizement simply makes it easier for us to ignore the valuable insights these artists are presenting to us. Even outside of the church, art may call us to conversion. Artists (from Dylan to Webb to De La Rocha) may not be “prophets” in the strictest sense of being God’s messengers – just as they are not exactly “priests” – but they may well play a valuable “prophetic” role that goes beyond “protest” to genuine mediation between the kingdom of God and human culture.

I had Wolterstorff’s book in mind while watching a recent video on the Gospel Coalition website entitled “Art, Conscience and Theological McCarthyism,” which features GC regulars Scotty Smith, Greg Thornbury and Mike Cosper discussing the important subject of the relationship of the church to art. While the admirable intention of this video is to help open up increased dialogue between the church, art and artists – getting rid of a “climate of fear” where Christians, particularly evangelicals, wall themselves off from culture – in the end the conversation steers towards the persistent fear that art (especially film) is trying to usurp the place of the church. In brief, these pastors are concerned that creative individuals outside the church (from pop stars to filmmakers to poets and painters) all too often see themselves as the “high priests” and “prophets” of culture, roles that presumably ought to be annexed to ecclesial (which, in the context of the Gospel Coalition, means biblical) authority.

Can an artist be said to serve a ”priestly” function, even if s/he is operating outside the bounds of the church? I suppose it depends how you construe priesthood. If one thinks of a priest as one who mediates divine presence to human culture, it seems obvious that a thinker such as Wolterstorff would be uncomfortable with this description (although I’m not sure I have a problem with it – doesn’t Van Gogh “mediate” an experience of the transcendent?). However, priests don’t just mediate “downwards” from the divine to the human, but offer thanksgiving “up” to God on behalf of the community – lifting heavenwards the fruit of the material realm, the transformed (and “ordered”) artefacts of the created order. If art is in its very nature a Godward response within the larger, God-appointed activity of culture-making, then indeed there is a way for even the most Reformed theorists to (carefully) draw a parallel between “priest” and “artist,” at the very least in discussing liturgical (ie. churchly) art but quite possibly in reference to art in general.

The hand-wringing on the Gospel Coalition website about art and priestly mediation can be traced back to a quote from Nigel Goodwin that “the new high priests of culture are the screenwriters and directors.”  Greg Thornbury’s fear is that artists – and I somehow can’t help but feel he has not just Martin Scorcese and Terrence Malick but Lady Gaga with her “little monsters” in mind - are self-assuredly taking it upon themselves to mediate experience of the mysterium tremendum et fascinans to the masses. This is not the first time Thornbury has expressed his apprehension about art as religion; in his review of Malick’s The Tree of Life he makes precisely the same point:

Today, there can be no doubt that the high priests, priests, and acolytes of our culture are the producers, directors, writers, and actors. As film increasingly presents people with opportunities to replicate certain aspects of religious experience, we must pause to reflect upon the growing reality of “theater as temple.”

In such a world, we have no choice but to repair to the foolishness of preaching, return to what Luther called the “poor tokens of the Word of God alone” . . . and hope at the end of the day that Terrence Malick is on our side.

However, as one TOJ reviewer noted, why do we need to establish that Terrence Malick, or Gaga for that matter, is “on our side”? Aren’t we all on the same side – namely, the side of humanity, doing our best to respond to the tug of the transcendent? Doesn’t posing an oppositional (rather than complementary) stance between “us” (Christians) and “them” (those who are outside the organized church) undercut the shared human impulse even Reformed thinkers like Wolterstorff find in the artistic task? Thornbury’s point here is that the “temple” Malick constructs with his film is so (for lack of a better word) ‘revelatory’ as to rival the mediating power of the Christian church, surely a genuine appreciation of just how effective beautiful works of art can be in connecting us with the sacred. But I would argue, against Thornbury, that to be able to see in earthly instantiations of beauty (even in “secular” art) echoes of the divine ought to remind Christians of the things we have in common with all humans, from all times and places. In short, if artists are in some way serving as “priests” despite their religious orientation, we might do well to ask whether they are in fact playing an important role in the economy of God rather than leading us (as individuals and the church) astray.

In the GC video, Mike Cosper suggests that evangelical Christians are surprised by “the fact that beauty is coming at us from voices that are unregenerate.” This language makes me very uncomfortable. Perhaps it is surprising to some that the arts, as part of culture, trespass on the territory of religious experience. But why would we expect one of the most significant areas of human cultural existence (namely, “beauty”) to be closed off to the “unregenerate,” by which Cosper obviously means ‘non-Christians’? My suspicion is that this video reveals a larger problem endemic to the “theology of culture” of the Gospel Coalition; although the many evangelicals who align themselves with the GC would like to make engagement with art and culture part of their mandate, their willingness to constructively engage culture is severely hindered by the fundamental dichotomy drawn between the “elect” and the “reprobate,” a structure which is projected onto their view of church and society. This tendency, while perhaps auspiciously Reformed in tone, falls short of the Reformational priority of valuing art and culture on their own terms, as part of the original creational mandate of humanity (even despite the depravity of human sin). Such a “theology of culture” makes it nearly impossible for artists outside the church to truly convey anything of the transcendent in their work, making them not extra-ecclesial “priests” but potential “false prophets.” This to me represents a big step backwards as far as encouraging dialogue between the church and art – perhaps it can encourage thoughtful Christian art, but by relegating all other human artists to the “unregenerate” category it seems to work directly against what it is trying to accomplish.

What do you think?

In Part II, I will try to explore some of the issues Thornbury et al have with the idea of artist as “prophet”… ie. and subsequently, why I (contra the Gospel Coalition) like Derek Webb.

NOTES

Nicholas Wolterstorff, Art in Action (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980).

Part of the challenge with a blog about theology and mass media (rather than “faith and culture” more generally) is the sheer vacuity of much ‘pop culture.’ As Tertullian might ask, “What hath Kim Kardashian to do with Radical Orthodoxy?” While “pop culture” is, undeniably, a species of “culture” with its own lexicon, mythologies, saints, prophets and visionaries, it is also too often a capital-driven, frequently mindless incubator of mediocrity. Christian exegesis of “pop culture” thus needs to not just theologically describe the vagaries of the mass media but attempt to engage it constructively. While we’ve been striving to do this all along, I think we’re just getting started!

As a result, I’m hoping this next year of Mediation will see more constructive dialogue about interesting things going on in media, from artists worth taking note of to actually worthwhile TV to news stories considered from a fresh, theologically-aware perspective. I also think we need to expand the conversation to include a plurality of voices, from a range of confessional (and non-confessional) traditions, political standpoints and theological orientations.

To that end, we are looking for some more occasional and regular contributors for Mediation. If you have some writing or blogging experience, and feel you could bring something to our conversation about theology, media, and creativity under the auspicious larger umbrella of The Other Journal, please drop us a line! (You can get in touch with me using the form submission here.)

All the best for 2012… and thanks for reading!

In the past couple years, I’d say digital publishing has altered people’s expectations about how literature is made available to them. We’re only just realizing the accessibility e-Readers give us, and they’ve made some pretty big waves with publishers who have found that e-books’ low cost to customers might be undermining the hardback, even the paperback. Still, booksellers and publishers have done our best to hop on board with this new medium. You’ll find QR codes all over my bookstore for popular titles, as well as downloadable e-books on our website from Google books.

It’s hard to say it’s one reason over another. Money is certainly an issue. Look at someone like Steve Almond, a writer whose practice and presence I deeply respect. He’s a full force in the self-publishing and e-book world now, after what he refers to as a “checkered” history in traditional publishing, which isn’t to say he doesn’t have ties to big houses—Random House, specifically. He self-publishes and self-promotes and works himself to the bone as the sole breadwinner for his family of four. The bygone days of the ’90s are over, when a stellar but underpaid poet like Roberto Bolaño could just switch to writing fiction and support his kids. No, the system’s due for an overhaul, and maybe the e-book is just the thing. Whole albums on iTunes for $9.99, Amazon’s price gouging, and the disparity in e-book prices make it hard to convince people a traditional hardback is worth the $25-$30. Lots of us don’t have that kind of money; Steve Almond filled out 39 1099 forms for 2010 to make ends meet. But I think these low-low prices we’re getting used to with digital publishing undermines the quality of the work. Almond’s writing is worth way more than the $10 he’s selling it for. Maybe an inexperienced writer publishing because he doesn’t want to spend the time and energy it takes to run the traditional route–maybe that book’s only worth $10, probably less. Keep in mind that Bolaño and Almond both had notable names and works under their belts before they shifted gears for what they’ve been able to work into a semblance of financial stability.

I think we also need to remember that a book (digital or not) might be peanuts to actually print and distribute, but it’s often years of labor for the author. You get maybe a few days to a few weeks of enjoyment from a book—maybe a lifetime—break that down to an hourly wage, and for the sake of argument imagine it all goes to the author, and at $30 it’s still slave’s wages.

I guess I got sidetracked before with self-publishing, but the fact remains that many self-published often choose digital media because it’s the least upfront cost for them. That said, much work that’s available digitally is also available in print. Most notable, probably, is Amanda Hocking, but she’s worked hard to self-promote. You can’t write a book, upload it to e-book, and just expect the crowds to flock. Social networking is one good route—Facebook and Twitter—but I think all authors will agree that contributing to web magazines, literary journals, newspapers, even the church newsletter (for crying out loud!) is going to be better than a bunch of SPAM to people who don’t give a whit about who you are or what you have to say. I don’t have an e-Reader, so I can’t speak to who’s better than who.

I think it provides readers and writers a wealth of opportunities if there ever comes a hard shift toward digital. So far, it’s been pretty tepid when you consider how few people are actually exclusively e-readers. In my undergrad, I spent some time exploring the idea of hypertext—like what you get with Wikipedia and other sites that allow you to click on actual portions of the text to take you somewhere else—hyperfiction specifically, as some examples were cropping up on the Internet. Danielewski’s House of Leaves is already a text-based form of hyperfiction, but I think more work like his would translate even better to e-Readers. Already, we’re using YouTube to view book trailers (1Q84 anyone?). Books have soundtracks now, too. I think if we can wrestle the medium into an off-shoot instead of a substitute for the book, the good literature, and quality, will follow.

It’s hard to say; I haven’t ever read anything on a tablet. But I can pretty well say that graphic novels won’t be anything I’d be interested in reading digitally. The art is arguably more important than the text. A lot of it is hand-drawn still, too, so it seems counter-intuitive to me to enjoy that form from a computer screen at all.

If the line breaks are correct, it’s fine. It’s sort of like how things translated to the pages of my book as opposed to the pages of my word processor. My poem “Slaughter Season” has these long couplets that stretched all across the page on my computer, so when it came time to print for my book, the lines break in a way that the couplet sense is lost, but I knew that going into it, too. Poetry is about the only text-based literature I’ve heard that doesn’t translate well to e-Readers.

Kind of like what I was saying before about hyperfiction. I think people are going to realize the tremendous expanse of opportunity they’re given when the computer is their medium for telling a story, as opposed to the page. I suspect in the long run we’ll start seeing more multimedia experiences with literature; in the next year or two, I hope to hear of more people testing those boundaries, or at least a tablet being capable of supporting that type of literature.

Star Wars is not just a set of movies but a full-blown cultural phenomenon which played a formative role in the childhood experience of millions of people around the globe. As such, lifelong fans of the film have often thought of the “original films” as sacrosanct. However, we all remember a few years ago when Lucas produced a “special edition” of the original 1970s trilogy, under the auspices of perfecting his unique vision. This revisiting was about a lot more than colour correction. A liberal application of CGI technology to the films, resulting in new effects, characters, scenes and even musical numbers gave the films a kind of digital sheen which many lifelong fans felt rendered the beloved films soulless. For Lucas, these revised versions were now the complete, canonical “original” films; in fact, the non-digitalized versions have become harder and harder to get hold of, and it is possible the “original” negatives have in fact been destroyed. The new “copy” is the “original”; arguably there is no “original.”

These were followed by three new films, almost universally deplored by the first wave of Star Wars fans, but embraced by a (much) younger one… kids under the age of 12 love Jar Jar Binks, pod-racing and the dreaded midi-chlorians, while fans of the “original trilogy” have produced their own multiple versions of the new films which edited these new, revisionist elements out. The documentary raises a pointed question: is George Lucas allowed to tinker with his own franchise? Can he do whatever he wants with the universe he created, an all-powerful auteur who can create and destroy at will? Or, now that his vision has passed into culture and into a multiplicity of copies and alternate versions, has it moved “out of his control,” having a separate, autonomous existence independent of his own authorial intentions?

For a series of films (particularly the new trilogy) about evil clones, it is perhaps ironic that Star Wars has engendered so many competing “copies.” We can think of all of the different circulating “editions” – VHS, DVD, some “special,” some containing one or another “original version.” Yet perhaps even more intriguingly, as the documentary attests, there are literally thousands of fan-made “versions” of the films, ubiquitous in the age of affordable video editing technology and YouTube. Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Chewbacca are portrayed by adolescent boys, family pets, stop-motion action figures, beer bottles with masks, eggs, crude animated stick-men; Tattooine is someone’s backyard, basement, school playground, and so on. Perhaps more interestingly, creative fans insert characters from the films into new narratives, some serious, but mostly bizarre: in one famous Internet fan film, Storm Troopers have their own “COPS”-type police procedural. This abundance of appropriative creativity speaks to the malleability of the original films – they provide a vocabulary for a universe of creativity, a template for interpretation and re-interpretation – something Lucas could perhaps not have envisioned but has at least partially embraced, in the form of a “fan-film” competition. And yet these multiple “copies,” some hilarious, some transgressive, others aiming to “perfect” Lucas’ own creative vision, are still not part of the “canonical” Star Wars franchise… the movies, books and now animated TV series that are continually generated by Lucasfilm itself.

Marcus Boon writes of “fan fiction” in his book In Praise of Copying:

Such appropriations have a long history in literature – from oral folk traditions, where local embellishments enhance a shared repertoire of stories and songs, to Renaissance theater, where Shakespeare and Marlowe continually lifted plots, characters, and dialogue for their own works.

Boon’s larger interest is in the ontology of copying and mimesis, and the question of whether it is possible to “identify an area of human activity outside copying,” built as it is into all our forms of cultural transmission and creativity. Copying is even part of our physiological makeup (eg. the replication of DNA, the basic act of “cloning” at all levels of our genetic existence). Multiple “versions” of the Star Wars saga, “appropriations” which carry forward the story of the Skywalker family, highlight the film’s own status as a copy – of Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress, for one, but also of archetypal characters and narratives, mythological tropes and ur-narratives… often related to twins, “mirroring” (Luke has a dream where he sees his own face under the Darth Vader mask), and light/dark dualisms. George Lucas has created a universe, and he can change it, but so can everyone else – the unresolvable battle for a “definitive” Star Wars is an endless war of clones, of copies, circulating, conflicting and expanding in a strange dialectic of creativity.

The Walking Dead is the brainchild of Robert Kirkman who adds to the corpus of zombie lit.  True zombies, the Caribbean voodoo monster who are reanimated dead humans, might not be exactly what is portrayed, and hence the term “walking” or “living dead ”(living dead is the term coined by George Romero in his classic and seminal film “Night of the Living Dead”) is to be preferred.  These creatures are animated corpses who turn on the nearest living thing.  In the series on AMC, humans are choice food, but the dead will turn on anything, horses, deer, etc.  These walking dead consume anything before them. 

What makes this series more than just a horror flick is that as with most zombie narratives, the zombie apocalypse brings about a remnant of society yet untouched and who struggle for survival.  While the horde of zombies clearly devour anything, the big question for this pocket of humanity is if they can manage to avoid doing the same.  Throughout the series, it is a struggle for the community to survive each other’s prejudices, hatreds, jealousies and more.  It remains to be seen what exactly is more repugnant, the walking dead devouring living human beings or living human beings devouring each other.  In the zombie apocalypse, survivors don’t necessarily get to choose who else has survived.  So when the racist white man has to live and depend on young African-American man with an attitude, the struggle for survival becomes all the more difficult.

Kirkman’s comics and series raises the important question for our culture.  What does our unchecked consumption mean for us as human beings?  Are human beings merely mindless consumers? Is there an ability to survive in a way where we do not simply feast on the lifeblood of others?  Just like in the growing darkness of the zombie apocalypse, where resources seem ever so scarce, is our society simply spiraling down into a place where each turns against the other?  Is there any hope for humanity whatsoever? Or is humanity doomed to be what it eats, itself?

So that the people know, who exactly are you?

Who am I? A person who falls in love. Oh, this morning it’s with Bagatelle tea, made in the white porcelain teapot. I am just now beginning my second brew, and while I’m waiting for it to steep I have nipped two Noir Orange chocolates from a collection of Belgian thins sitting on my gold granite countertop.

Don’t let the fancy thought of garnet-flecked granite fool you. My kitchen is quite small, as is the 1930’s Tudor in which it resides. I stand at the counter almost all day while I do some of my many jobs: managing editor for TheHighCalling.org; staff writer for The Curator; soul behind T. S. Poetry Press and its related communications, like Every Day Poems and Tweetspeak.

What is your role with T. S. Poetry Press?

Soul, as I said a moment ago. Seeker of poetry and prose I can fall in love with. I pay the bills. Others do the editing, photography, and take care of our grass-roots publicity.

How did T. S. Poetry Press start?

The tea is ready, and it’s a little on the light side (note to self: Bagatelle doesn’t hold up well to a second go-round), so I am going to sit down now and sip while I consider how to answer…it started with love and discontent. Love for beautiful words. I wanted the world to see them. There was also discontent with the possibilities; it seemed to me that some of these words, for one reason or another, might never be formally shared.

Basically, it started as a dare. Could a start-up press be successful in a climate where publishers were cutting back, canceling contracts, running scared? I love a good dare! Tell me I can’t do it, and I might decide to show you I can.

So given this current climate, how is T. S. Poetry Press different than another start up press?

Is it different? It is hard for me to imagine anyone starting a small press, except for love. It takes tenacity, time, resources… and a deep belief. Maybe my heavy involvement with social media makes the Press different. It is how I’ve developed a strong platform and ultimately made a profit.

With such an ambitious catalog of books so far, what is the “big picture” goal of T. S. Poetry Press?

Tea, I think. Or coffee. And words shared across tables, across the wires, anywhere that people wish to show their care for each other. All of our books are Creative Commons. That doesn’t mean you can republish them in full; it does mean you can share a poem on a blog or in your own book, without writing for permissions. Just credit and link to us, and move on to your real objective: to connect with another person through words, to change them or you in the process, or just to share a moment of beauty.

Looking beyond T.S. Poetry Press, how do you see self-publishing and digital publishing changing the publishing landscape?

Two different questions, really. Self-publishing, in its strictest sense, is publishing that might not be vetted. It can be Lulu and Createspace, with substandard art and endorsements from your next-door neighbor. It will not change much, just as vanity publishing didn’t change much.

But digital publishing (sometimes of your own excellent, vetted books—so the term self-publishing can also apply here) is a powerful new player. Digital publishing, in the hands of experienced authors who have connections, in the hands of experienced editors who know how to bring a book to print, is changing the game. It can still be Createspace, but when the book arrives to the buyer, she will absolutely know the difference. The quality of the writing, the art, the endorsements will all say this is not vanity; it is something to be regarded.

And because this can be done at a fraction of the cost (without funding warehouses, inventory and royalties systems, fulfillment and distribution), well, the “small” press has much bigger opportunities than ever before.

Specific to poetry, how does digital publishing affect readability?

Reading poetry on a Kindle affects readability. This is true even with non-fiction. Pages break where they will. It is hard to cognitively map the book. Worse with poetry, of course, which often depends on meticulously-determined line lengths and breaks. But a quarter of our poetry sales are on Kindle. So somebody doesn’t mind.

Do you like reading poetry on a Kindle or iPad/iPhone?

Nope.

But I love writing poetry in little boxes—otherwise called Twitter— and the platform for our improv poetry parties. Some people deride such activity, but I am going to write about this sometime: it’s the basis for poetry in a certain Roman tradition. So writing poetry on Twitter is more classic than one might expect, at least the way we do it with our community.

What is the biggest gain you receive from digital publishing?

The shareability factor is marvelous. And T. S. Poetry Press depends on that.

Do you think a press like T. S. Poetry will always be around, or do you see small presses like yours as stepping stones to a time when authors will take full control of their own work and function as their own press?

I have considered this question. For some authors, these presses will be stepping stones. But other authors will appreciate the opportunity to simply write without the pressure of finding quality editorial, design, and marketing support. They will recognize that having their books surrounded by sister titles is a source of free promotion and buoyancy. They will be happy to have a much higher royalty than with traditional publishers, but a low responsibility for dealing with all the intricacies of publishing.

In some ways it doesn’t matter to me. I’m not looking for this to last forever. I’m enjoying the tea, if you will, just for this moment in time.

L.L. Barkat is the author of four books—Stone Crossings, InsideOut, God in the Yard & Rumors of Water—and blogs at Seedlings in Stone.

This modern notion of culture sees cultures as unified entities that are held together by shared values and common practices. Christian reflection on such entities often implies that a kind of objective appraisal can be made of this entity called “modern culture.” But again this assumes that Christians can inhabit a space somehow removed from their cultural surroundings. The truth is, of course, that they are already formed by their culture long before they begin any critical reflection on it. “Culture” is not out there waiting to be examined; it is already a part of who they are. (p. 74)

Christians are not a-cultural but, by virtue of being human, enculturated. Unless we are radical isolationists, we generally watch the same movies and TV shows, listen to the same music, and engage in the same or at least similar social practices (from going to Starbucks to yoga to shopping at Wal-Mart) as everyone else in our local communities. Can we respond creatively to culture, especially in an age where homogeneity is the rule? Of course – being situated in a particular culture (or, better, a confluence of cultures, especially in the global village) does not result in a strict “cultural determinism” (p. 86). We can become (in Andy Crouch’s term) “culture-makers,” committed to redemption and re-creation, as well as critical analysts of culture. But we do so not from some “Olympic height” where we can abstractly, objectively determine “what [we] should make of this modern culture” (p. 86). We are ‘always already’ cultural beings. Christians have generally realized that we don’t approach the Bible from a value-free, a-cultural standpoint, and that in fact this awareness enriches our hermeneutics. How much more ought we to acknowledge – and perhaps embrace! – our own cultural situation when turning an eye to the complex, overlapping symbols and narratives that make up our own “culture.”

Another obscure evangelical pastor has made a controversial pronouncement which has been picked up by the mass media. Fortunately, there’s no Qu’ran-burning this time around… instead, one hitherto unknown Pastor Robert Jeffress has been quoted as saying that Christians should not vote for potential Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney because he is a member of the dangerous “cult” of Mormonism. Instead, Jeffress and others argue, evangelicals in particular should be supporting a “competent Christian” candidate to serve as the leader of the GOP, preferably Rick Perry.

This news story raises some age-old questions, at least on the Christian side: Is Mormonism indeed a “cult”? A Christian “sect”? Or another religion entirely? Richard Mouw, the president of Fuller Seminary who has been a leading figure in Mormon-Evangelical dialogue, wrote an op-ed piece over the controversy for the CNN Belief Blog which makes the compelling case that Mormonism is not a “cult,” although he is not prepared to fully embrace it as an expression of Christian orthodoxy. As he notes, the language of “cult” is largely pejorative, and so fosters unhelpful stereotypes. I would add to the perhaps somewhat complex question of classification the observation that while Mormons see themselves as faithful to the revelation of Jesus, then again so do Muslims and we aren’t often tempted to think of Islam as a Christian “sect.” Like Islam, Mormonism has its own significant prophet, sacred texts which surpass the Christian Scriptures in interpretive importance, and unique ritual and communal practices. If the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not a full-fledged new religion (like Islam), it certainly represents a truly new religious idea. (The scope of this innovation is brilliantly described by Harold Bloom in his book The American Religion.)

Mormons and evangelicals have something of an uncomfortable relationship. However, in an age where our understanding of complicated things like religion and politics are mainly derived from TV shows, the truth is that for many North Americans, Christians (especially evangelicals) and Mormons appear virtually indistinguishable. Here are two religious groups who share a common vocabulary, sacred texts and practices, and in fact when it comes to evangelicals have a common ancestry: Joseph Smith came from an area of New York State that had seen so many fiery evangelical revivals it was known as the “burned-over district.” Big suburban churches, “family values,” clean-cut youths sharing gospel tracts… these are the stereotypical ways both of these religious movements appear to many outsiders. Watching reality shows on TLC, for example, there is no distinguishable difference between the Duggars (“19 Kids and Counting”), an evangelical family with 19 kids mostly notable for their love of feminine modesty, conservative values and Kirk Cameron, and the polygamous, FLDS Brown family (“Sister Wives”) and their conservative, modest, family-oriented existence in Utah. Both are pleasant, large suburban families whom you might think would share common values. The latter family just happens to have four moms and believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet. Both the Duggars and the Browns are, simply put, generic adherents of “American religion,” regardless of the specifics.

Part of opening up a sustained dialogue between evangelicals and Mormons is improving understanding on both sides, rather than skipping over differences. Much of this means getting rid of preconceptions. The mainstream LDS church does not practice polygamy. It is not, if Mouw is correct, a “cult” in terms of its recruiting practices. It has produced scholars (such as Terryl Givens) who have articulated its doctrines in ways that already open up areas of dialogue with Christians, such as exploring the Mormon idea of men becoming gods as akin to the Christian doctrine of theosis. Although we should not ignore our important and often major differences, understanding Mormonism on its own terms – as a religious movement both continuous and radically discontinuous with Christianity – will help us coexist more peacefully in the often religiously and politically polarized North American situation.

The most pressing question, however, is the more provocative one. Is the United States ready for a Mormon president? The idea that Christians need to elect Christian politicians is already fraught with problems. Shouldn’t we prefer a “competent” leader of whatever religion (or lack thereof)? Of course the implicit idea that all American evangelicals vote Republican is equally problematic (not to mention the fact that churches endorsing particular political candidates, as with Rev. Jeffress, may break U.S. tax laws). Nevertheless, leaving to the side the specific case of Mitt Romney and the GOP leadership race, if we are prepared to admit that Mormonism is not a “cult” but a religion in its own right, perhaps a future Mormon head of state – regardless of what political party they adhere to – wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.

We are used to seeing brooding, dark, sexy, mysterious men play the bad-ass in movies such as these.  However, the ferocity of a women gives these new action flicks a whole new perspective.  For we (naturally) carry many preconceived notions about the nature of a woman and her role in society. We think of them as loving, gentle, subservient, sexy (but in an objectifying way), soft, comprising, etc.  To see these qualities absorbed into a complex and powerful character like Cataleya (Zoe Saldana from Colombiana), for instance, gives a greater depth and intrigue to the Jason Bourne-like action figure persona.

The film industry is sharply turning the established norm upside down.  Of course, we may be thinking that something like that is typical of the arts industry.  Filmmakers, artists, musicians, writers, etc. are (seemingly) always trying to go beyond the established norm.  Why then should we be surprised, here?  Well, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised, but we should be reflective.

The fact of the matter is our prejudices run deeper than we like to admit, and films like Hanna can still, in 2011,  make a statement about power and gender roles.  We have not yet graduated to a level of fair-minded, level-headed, reasonable, non-prejudicial egalitarianism.  The truth of the matter is that the fights for women – to be given a strong place in the institutions of our society – are still very real.  And, unfortunately, the Christian church finds itself no better positioned than the rest of society…worst in many cases.

The Church continues to exclude and suppress women, which is a sad state of affairs, since Christians should know, more than most, how to fight for the marginalized and strengthen the voice of those at the bottom.  For the Christian gospel turns power structures upside down, proclaiming the kingdom for those who are not strong, but meek; those who are not rich, but poor; those who are not like Caesar, but Jesus (a peasant).

The Church could take a cue from the themes running through many of these recent action films, which strongly resist the standard roles of power and marginalization.  Our discourse must move beyond the simplicity of egalitarian-complimentarian debates, in which each side picks scripture passages, does some exegesis, and waves their interpretation in their opponents face.  When that happens, the debate becomes more important than the people (i.e. women) for whom we are supposedly arguing our case.  Thus, we marginalize women in the name of women!

The better way forward here is to look at the themes of the gospel more deeply, in which the (popularly understood) world is turned upside down; strength and salvation are given to the lowly, the disenfranchised, and the marginalized.  If we go in this direction, we will fight harder for women, putting them in the lead role, as it were – no matter what “doctrinal” stance we take.  For one thing is clear to all: women are extraordinarily valuable.