From Popular Culture to Church Culture and Back Again

Oscar Wilde wrote in an 1889 essay that, “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.” This famous quote speaks directly to a very active topic in the church world about the boundaries of Sacred Culture and Popular Culture. What is appropriate for worship or to be used as devotional material in the Church? Do the materials or music need to have Sacred Intention at the time of creation or is borrowing from one to the other okay? I want us to reflect on this and to offer a practical devotional practice this Lent to help us Go Deeper whenever a popular song on the radio or so called “secular” NPR story pulls at the Sacred parts of our Souls. 

First, let’s start with definitions. What is popular culture? Somehow, I still have all my textbooks from a class I took twelve years ago at Grinnell College called, “Nineteenth Century American Popular Culture!” In the book, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, expert sociologists tell us, “culture [is] one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language…First, culture can be used to refer to a general process of intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic development…A second use of the word culture might be to suggest a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period or group…Finally, culture can be used to refer to the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity. In other words, culture here means the texts and practices whose principle function is to signify, to produce or to be the occasion for the production of meaning. Culture in this third definition is synonymous with what structuralists and post-structuralists call ‘signifying practices.’” 

The Church has traditionally liked to think of itself as part of the cohort of institutions protecting and operating within the first definition of culture—that of the academy and synonymous with high culture and authority. That is an unfortunate category for us to place ourselves. We should be the movement-makers. I would argue that we really need to be intentionally in the business and the artistic process of creating and aligning with Popular Culture—the third and more intimate definition with daily, lived, deep, embodied, real Christian living and practice. How are we still producing meaning? How are we working to be relevant and interesting to those whom have never thought Church was an option? How can we find God in the Secular and then make it Sacred? Church is in the business of Signifying Practices that make life and living better, more whole, and deeper! 

Even as a Mainline Minister, the greatest gift of growing-up Evangelical Christian that I cling to and still believe from the depths of my heart and lived experience is a lack of boundary between the Sacred and Secular parts of life. God is working in and through everything. “Prepare my heart,” O God, we pray, “and may I find you in every way.” This doesn’t mean that they like “the world,”, but it means that they use and incorporate popular culture into the church in order to transform it into church culture. My favorite “hymn” growing-up was, and this is not a joke, “I’m a Believer”  by the Monkees. It was modified, of course, from the original love song to be about God. 

As Progressive Mainliners, we have amazing worship together on Sundays, and I do not suggest changing the authenticity of who we are and our tradition with that part of who we are and what we do here. If anything, it makes us cool and appealing to new generations that we have tradition and liturgy. Our worship is awesome and unique. 

We should, however, go deeper and find God in the popular culture songs that move our souls and hearts. An example, for me, is a song that has been on the radio recently and on the Charts called, “You’re Someone Else,” by the group Flora Cash. 

Here is the Practice of Transforming Popular Culture into Personal Faith Culture and it is radical: The lyrics speak to a sense of connection between people, seeing the beauty in others that they don’t always see themselves, and the need for authenticity in a time of superficiality. Songs like these have the power to save lives, to give hope, and to help people go deeper. If we listen with intention to popular culture songs, spend time meditating on the lyrics, and praying for those whom are most effected around the world by the music, the act of passively listening to music can become Spiritual Practice. Now, that is radical. (Here is the original video (art) produced by the band.)

I saw the part of you
That only when you're older you will see too
You will see too
I held the better cards
But every stroke of luck has got a bleed through
It's got a bleed through
You held the balance of the time
That only blindly I could read you
But I could read you
It's like you told me
Go forward slowly
It's not a race to the end

Well you look like yourself
But you're somebody else
Only it ain't on the surface
Well you talk like yourself
No, I hear someone else though
Now you're making me nervous

You were the better part
Of every bit of beating heart that I had
Whatever I had
I finally sat alone
Pitch black flesh and bone
Couldn't believe that you were gone

Well you look like yourself
But you're somebody else
Only it ain't on the surface
Well you talk like yourself
No, I hear someone else though
Now you're making me nervous

Well you look like yourself
But you're somebody else
Only it ain't on the surface
Well you talk like yourself
No, I hear someone else though
Now you're making me nervous

Where are we?
Where are we?

Well you look like yourself
But you're somebody else
Only it ain't on the surface
Well you talk like yourself
No, I hear someone else though
Now you're making me nervous

Well you look like yourself
But you're somebody else
Only it ain't on the surface
Well you talk like yourself

No, I hear someone else though
Now you're making me nervous
I saw the part of you that only when you're older
You will see too, you will see too

What do you hear resonate with you? Loneliness, hope, potential, loss, isolation, liberation, God? Where is God working through this music or lyrics? Have you ever tried to be someone else? How did that go for you? How were you transformed? Are you still trying to be someone else—a hero, a villain, a parent, a celebrity? 

All of us have time to listen to the radio or NPR. Music is all around us now with Spotify and Pandora. Let’s turn it into a Spiritual Practice. At the end of a song, a segment, a story you hear pray for yourself or for someone else out there also listening to it or implicated in it. Pray for the hope to go on and to live in authenticity. Journal based on a favorite song. Draw a picture of how you feel. Turn the ordinary into the deeply extraordinary. 

This is the future of Christianity—we must again be in the camp of the signifying practices and cultural totems that really mean and feel and sing something to diverse people. 

“Well you look like yourself, but you are someone else… only it ain’t on the surface.” 

Let’s find ways to get beyond the surface of things together as a community of faith and go deeper again. 

In Authenticity Always, 
Jake 

Author

The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph ("just Jake"), Associate Minister, came to Plymouth in 2014 having served in the national setting of the UCC on the board of Justice & Witness Ministries, the Coalition for LGBT Concerns, and the Chairperson of the Council for Youth and Young Adult Ministries (CYYAM). Jake has a passion for ecumenical work and has worked in a wide variety of churches and traditions. Read more about him on our staff page.