Check out the course description and required reading for the Theology & Pop Culture class I’m about to begin at Fuller:
DESCRIPTION: This multi-disciplinary course will strengthen students’ cultural literacy by helping them understand the ways pop culture is created, marketed, consumed, received and critiqued. The course will examine pop culture artifacts as works/texts, consumer products, and pervasive agents of spiritual formation. Students will develop biblical/theological, historical, and economic understandings of music, film, TV, radio, periodicals, books, advertising, and the Internet.
SIGNIFICANCE FOR LIFE AND MINISTRY: In this course students will reassess pop culture’s relevance to their lives, their ministry, and the church’s engagement with mainstream culture.
LEARNING OUTCOMES: Pop culture is pervasive and influential. Students successfully completing this course will:
- Develop a theology of culture and pop culture that helps them analyze their own culture consumption, prepare them for meaningful and effective ministry in a media-saturated age, and address culture’s role in their own spiritual growth and that of those for whom they care;
- Understand how pop culture products are created, disseminated, used and abused;
- Evaluate the varied economic, social and spiritual impacts of mass media and products;
- Assess evangelicals’ historic responses to popular culture in order to develop more effective ways of impacting and engaging both culture and those who create it.
- Develop strategies and activities for teaching cultural literacy to others.
REQUIRED READING:
- Beaujon, Andrew. Body Piercing Saved My Life: Inside the Phenomenon of Christian Rock. (DeCapo Press, 2006), 291 pp.
- Hipps, Shane. Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Faith and Culture. Zondervan, 2009. 208 pp.
- Lewerenz, Spencer and Nicolosi, Barbara, eds. Behind the Screen: Hollywood Insiders on Faith, Film and Culture. (Baker Books, 2005), 216 pp.
- Lynch, Gordon. Understanding Theology and Popular Culture. Blackwell Publishing, Inc., 2004, 195 pp.
- Schaeffer, Francis. Art and the Bible (InterVarsity Press, 1973), 63 pp.
- Vanhoozer, Kevin, Charles Anderson, and Michael Sleasman (editors). Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends. Baker Academic, 2007. Introduction and two case studies. (roughly 250 pgs)
- You must also purchase, read and bring to class a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly magazine. Selected articles, videos, audio recordings, and other materials to be distributed in class.
This is in addition to the film class I’m hoping to get into at City College of San Francisco.
Right up my alley I tell ya! I love it!
I truly believe every Jesus-follower is called to be a missionary regardless of where they live.
These words of Jesus come to mind. When praying to His Father He said:
“As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” John 17:18
Followers of Jesus have been ”sent into the world” for a reason, and it’s not to hide.
If you really want to influence culture, learn to engage it.
Constantly throwing rocks is the easy way out, and it’s often not very helpful.
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