When Francis Schaeffer released his How Shall We Then Live book and video series in 1976, the evangelical community didn’t know what to do about popular culture. Few people attempted to make connections as Scheaffer did with his history-based critique.
Today, there are lots of voices to help guide Christians in how to live in contemporary culture. Alan Noble, editor-in-chief at Christ and Pop Cuture website, is one of those. He is an English professor at Oklahoma Baptist University and spoke at Upper House in Madison recently on the topic, “Disruptive Witness: Speaking Truth in a Distracted Age.”
“Schaeffer changed everything for me,” Noble said. “He showed me it was possible to be an orthodox Christian and particate in culture. He wasn’t hostile, he was charitable and respectful.” He appreciated how Schaeffer identified specific songs in secular music that were telling truths about the world.
Music, movies, and other aspects of popular culture still inevitably tell truths about the world we live in. “The get some things right and some things wrong,” Noble said. “Seeing art in this way you don’t have to approach from an antagonistic viewpoint. Good cultural commentary is good apologetics.”
Sometimes, Noble said, a Christian critique could find truth in a work that the artist wasn’t able to articulate. “Shining a light on things that are valuable is important,” he said. “We live in a negative, critical world. We need examples of good things.”
Not everything in our culture is worth our time. It’s a helpful service to be able to help believers navigate our fast-paced consumer culture because people should be discerning.
Noble also advocated for participating in culture as a community. “The worst thing you can do is watch a film by yourself and not talk about it,” he said, because films raise questions about our culture. “These questions really need to be answered in community.”
He said he’s always glad to see Christian artists and musicians who try to engage the culture through their work, although that can be risky. “The moment artists become more thoughtful in their craft, their fans sometimes think that they’re abandoning their faith,” he said.
Now, almost a half century later, Noble says How Shall We Then Live is still a good social critique.