Reversing the Sandman Effect:

In his regrettably overlooked book, The Gravedigger File, Os Guinness portrays the subversion of the North American church using a literary method similar to C. S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters. (1) In a series of memos a senior intelligence agent trains his successor in the spiritual warfare of undermining Christian impact. Each memo describes a successful strategy to be emulated. One of them he calls "The Sandman Effect." According to this tactic, the junior spy must learn to fool Christians into thinking only the mind matters. This puts them to sleep because they have been lulled into thinking that everyone is a thinker and operates on reason alone, when in fact many other influences are at work. The senior agent points out to his student that a literary or philosophical movement often becomes influential not because specific arguments were carefully studied, but because of cultural factors. For example, the power of revolutionary artists and pundits on the Left Bank of Paris between the two World Wars had as much to do with the European cultural mood and the ambiance of the cafs as with the ideas themselves, which were often less than solid. Christian apologetics which is limited to tight philosophical argument is simply ineffective when the climate is forgotten. This is especially true today, when style is ubiquitous and truth is out of fashion.

A perfect example of the need for cultural awareness in apologetics is the enormously complex question of modernity and the postmodern. Thinkers such as Thomas Oden and, to a lesser extent, Brian Walsh and Richard Middleton, believe a postmodern culture is more favorable for evangelism than a modern one. (2) Others, like Gene Edward Veith, are loath to find the postmodern so convivial to Christian faith. (3) In order to decide, and in fact even to understand the discussion at all, one needs to look at the cultural dimension. The philosophers of the Enlightenment are often blamed for the secularization of the West. It was they who proclaimed a brave new world without God and without law. Modernity is often understood to be the child of the Enlightenment ideology, because it affirmed the ability of human beings, unaided, to reason their way to a free society. But a deeper look will show that many social, psychological, and cultural factors were also at work in the rise of the modern world. The development of the bureaucratic state, a market economy, science and technology, travel, literacy: all these (and more) cultural factors are a dynamic in the rise of the modern world view. Modernity is a mode of civilization, not just a set of ideas. Postmodernists challenge that mode, believing modernity to be obsolete. After Auschwitz, according to Jean-Franois Lyotard, modernity is simply "liquidated." (4) This is not only a philosophical remark. It is an emotionally packed revolt against what he calls the grand rcit (the meta-narrative).

What is at stake here is to recognize the combination of ideas with events, culture, social structure, and psychological atmosphere. Neither the modern nor the postmodern modes are a matter of ideas alone. The old saying, "ideas have consequences," is only part of the story. "Cultures have ideas" is also true. It is a matter of "reasons of the heart," or presuppositions, which indeed have an intellectual component, but are richer and deeper than the mind alone. If one limits the horizon to ideas, it might be easy enough to conclude that we are in a postmodern era, and that the Gospel has fallen on hard times, because no one cares much about truth anymore. But if one takes the cultural dimension into account then it would not appear so clear that modernity has left us. Despite the pressure from literary theory and from some pockets of popular culture to the contrary, we are still rooted in modernity, with its trust in science, technology, bureaucracy, the market, and so on. In fact, it is the case that much of what the postmodern claims cannot stand unless modernity is still with us. Of course, the Gospel is not necessarily a better friend of modernity than it is of the postmodern. At the same time, the Gospel is critical of the roots of modernity, and is able to see the claims of the postmodern for what they are. When our Lord challenged Nicodemus, the rich young ruler, the Samaritan woman, and so many others, he was confirming this notion that we are not just ideas with legs. We are a dispositional complex being with a religious-moral heart.

Thus cultural apologetics actually goes deeper than purely ideational apologetics, because it begins at the level of presuppositions, of basic commitments. But now, it is important to underscore what is not being said. Three disclaimers should be made at the outset. 1) It is not that ideas do not matter. Of course they do. But ideas come in a context, and Christians frequently ignore the social and psychological setting for people's convictions to their peril. The background for Guinness' insight is the work of scholars like Peter Berger, the sociologist of religion, and Owen Chadwick, the social historian. Berger points out that ideas make sense not only because of their intellectual validity but also because of the structures of plausibility in which they occur. What he refers to by this term are the institutions and social or cultural entities that reinforce (or undercut) a given notion. In a world of rapid transportation and instant communication it is more difficult to believe in one way of doing things than in a stable, premodern world. In a world affected by the rule of the market it is more difficult to believe in values that have no price tag than in more traditional societies. Chadwick points out that the reason Europeans embraced Marx and Darwin in the nineteenth century is as much their resentment against a church that did not provide for their needs (as they perceived it), as the polemics, which were difficult to follow at best. (5)

2) It should also be pointed out that respecting the context for ideas in no way minimizes the verbal in favor of the nonverbal. Sociologist Jacques Ellul warns against The Humiliation of the Word, in a society that is ruled by images rather than ideas. (6) Though at times he exaggerates the contrast, he correctly alerts us to the tendency in an image-laden culture to make hasty judgments, to reduce thought to information, and to feed on things that stimulate rather than things that edify. There is a world of difference between recognizing the cultural context of an idea and reducing the idea to context. In Marxian sociology of knowledge, social institutions actually determine doctrines, rather than any other factor. This is not only against common sense but against the biblical teaching on revelation, which though supported by events and images, is primarily the Word of God, to be received thoughtfully.

3) Doing cultural apologetics is not a matter of fun with culture! We are not advocating more theater, more novels, or using stories, though these are all wonderful. We are advocating learning to judge currents and trends that will inform and enrich our ability to persuade a lost generation. Where do we begin? There are so many different approaches to culture, so many trends and counter-trends in culture studies, sorting out the good from the bad is indeed problematic. After all, the present interest in academic circles in culture studies began with Marxism and the Annales School, both of which aimed at "total history," which sought to include economics, geography, social structures, but with no overarching or transcendent reference point for deciphering the meaning of events. "Cultural and moral mediations," as understood by E. P. Thompson, for example, is little more than classical Marxism with a cultural edge. (7) Radical thinkers such as Michel Foucault, fascinating though their work can be, tend to reduce culture to technologies of power, located in various types of discourse. (8) More recently, the inclusion of anthropological and linguistic data in culture studies by Clifford Geertz, Pierre Bourdieu, Northop Frye, and others has opened up many new vistas of enquiry, yet each new emphasis often comes with an overall interpretive frame that must give Christians pause.

Cultural apologetics, then, is simply apologetics that recognizes the key factors in the context which contribute to the way people think and behave. Francis Schaeffer did some of his most effective evangelism in art galleries. Seeing the picture is a most persuasive background for discussions of meaning and truth. We willingly confess that culture is God-given, and that even in a fallen world culture is a crucial factor to reckon with. So then, what is culture? Culture is a complex reality. It includes intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic developments (the work of the poets, the philosophers, the theologians). It also includes a way of life (holidays, sports, literacy, etc.). And it certainly includes what we often mean by culture proper, the creative arts, or "signifying practices." (9) One important adjunct to these definitions is the notion of popular culture. Here we have a wider application of the above principles, to a larger social group, and includes low-brow tastes and practices. Many researchers are giving their attention to this neglected branch of culture studies. Many tools are at our disposal if we wish to engage in cultural apologetics. Often they have been developed by able but unbelieving scientists. While we benefit a great deal from the cultural turn in recent scholarship, we hold many of the results with a light hand, knowing from whence they come.

Christian apologists have not been altogether somnolent when it comes to recognizing the cultural dimension. A number of sociologists, working with an apologetic intent, have made good use of cultural awareness in helping us understand trends such as secularization, the postmodern condition, pluralism, cybernetics, and so on. Among them are Robert Wuthnow, James Hunter, Os Guinness, Brian Walsh, Richard Keyes, David Wells, and Douglas Groothuis. Missiology, a close cousin of apologetics, has benefited a good deal from the cultural turn as well. Sherwood Lingenfelter has embraced some of the work of anthropologist Mary Douglas in his approach to transforming culture. Westminster Seminary professor Harvie Conn has shown a high degree of sensitivity to contextual issues in his approach to missions in general, and urban missions in particular. Many theologians are wide awake to the globalization of modern life, and the consequent necessity of developing a theology of other religions, a clear idea of church/state relations, and a sensitivity to the virtues of non-Western expressions of Christian faith. (10)

Cultural apologetics is more than books and learning. It is also a matter of form. I have been greatly impressed with several contemporary approaches. Examples can be grouped into three types, though there are many more. 1) Magazines, radio programs, video presentations that aim to engage leaders and trends in our society with the Gospel. Regeneration Quarterly, for example, focuses on so-called Generation-X, and has thoughtful pieces on work habits, modern literature, worship styles, etc. Books and Culture, a subsidiary of Christianity Today, uses a format similar to The New York Review of Books, and reviews a wide variety of recent publications, many of which have a cultural character. Ken Myers is the host of Mars Hill Audio, a series of taped interviews and commentary on persons, books, events, and art objects from the surrounding culture. Similar to the National Public Radio format, Myers engages an impressive number of present-day gatekeepers in conversations about everything from advertising to popular music, and always presents implications for faith. 2) Reaching modern universities is a particularly important strategy for cultural apologetics. A number of groups place professors in key positions to teach from a Christian point of view. The International Institute for Christian Studies (IICS) places teachers, most of whom hold the Ph.D., in universities around the world, especially in some of the newly freed countries. Their goal is to reestablish the Christian point of view in universities from Prague to Beijing to Moscow to Nairobi. (11) The Veritas Forum has a unique format for outreach to contemporary universities. The group conducts large-scale conferences jointly sponsored by various Christian groups on campus, where Christians are brought in to speak on different disciplines. The Veritas Forum began at Harvard but now has been held at scores of colleges around the country. (12) 3) Finally, there is a significant place for study centers and informal institutes. The American Studies Program, a branch of the Coalition for Christian Outreach, brings students to the Washington area for training in putting the Christian worldview to work in politics, literature, etc. The Trinity Forum, hosted by Os Guinness, is an "academy without walls," which brings in leaders for intensive discussions of curricula specially conceived to help them see their work as a calling. In an Aspen-like format, texts from great literature and profound thinkers are examined in depth and guests are challenged to look at the big picture.

In the end, cultural apologetics aspires to follow the injunction from Romans 12:2: "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is-his good, pleasing and perfect will." And to do that, we'll have to be like the Men of Issachar, "who understood the times and knew what Israel should do" (1 Chron. 12:32). This is no time to be lulled by the Sandman.