Against Pop Culture

July 9th, 2019 | 8 min read

Christians love pop culture these days. But the subset of Christians who love pop culture the most is pastors, writers, and academics. Pop culture as a mode of “engagement”; pop culture as a means of “reaching” this or that group; pop culture as a way of “relating” to students: all these and more are celebrated and commended and practiced in churches, classrooms, and websites every day.

true

Want to keep reading?

Subscribe for free to access this article and all of our resources.

Brad East

Brad East (PhD, Yale University) is assistant professor of theology in the College of Biblical Studies at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas. He is the editor of Robert Jenson’s The Triune Story: Collected Essays on Scripture (Oxford University Press, 2019) and the author of The Doctrine of Scripture (Cascade, 2021) and The Church’s Book: Theology of Scripture in Ecclesial Context (Eerdmans, 2022). His articles have been published in Modern Theology, International Journal of Systematic Theology, Scottish Journal of Theology, Journal of Theological Interpretation, Anglican Theological Review, Pro Ecclesia, Political Theology, Restoration Quarterly, and The Other Journal; his essays and reviews have appeared in The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Comment, Commonweal, First Things, The Hedgehog Review, Living Church, Los Angeles Review of Books, Marginalia Review of Books, Mere Orthodoxy, The New Atlantis, Plough, and The Point. Further information, as well as his blog, can be found at bradeast.org.

Topics:

Featured

Culture

Against Pop Culture

Want to keep reading?

Time is Always Time: Christopher Nolan, T. S. Eliot, and Creatureliness

The Four Quadrants of Church Life in the Gray Zone

How to Value Caring Work

Cats and Sixty Foot Whales: Reflections on Children’s Books

Markets and the Strangulation of the American Family

The Market Made Me Do It: The Scandal of the Evangelical College

Tethered Still

Guns and the Shaping of Character

Against Textbooks: Why We Need Bigger Stories

The Cost of Food in America

The Austen Years: A Review in Six Movements

The Danger of Respectable Christianity

The Church Amongst the Counter-Institutions

Dignity Beyond Accomplishment

When the Therapeutic Replaces Sin

When the Ad Replaced the Icon

Following Christ in the Machine Age: A Conversation with Paul Kingsnorth

Imperial Migrations

Teach Them Friendship

The Church Will Not Be Consulted

Os Guinness: The Christian Public Intellectual After Jacques Maritain

The Case for Pew Bibles

Once More, Church and Culture

Why People Don’t Leave Social Media

60 Questions for Pro-Choice Christians