I started reading Kenneth A. Myers' All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes last night, and nearly devoured the whole thing in one sitting. It's simply outstanding.
Among his most salient points: evangelicals are greatly concerned about the content of pop culture, but we don't seem to understand that the form of it carries just as much meaning.
Is rap music good if it has Christianized lyrics? The fact that most in our culture (including most evangelicals) would blanche at even the mere suggestion that some forms of music are intrinsically better than others is an indication that we've swalled the cultural camel while straining out a few of its gnats.
Either there are true asthetic standards ultimately rooted in the eternal, or there's no objective basis whatsoever for claiming that Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is better than "Ice Ice Baby," or that War and Peace is better than Valley of the Dolls. Even Christians (especially Christians?) find themselves embracing such relativism; wintess the many "Christian" products that simply put a Christian gloss on already-existing pop culture phenomena.
Excellent, excellent book.
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