The Shaping of the Evangelical Imagination

[Music] foreign and welcome to all of you joining us for today's online conversation with special guest Karen swallow Pryor on the shaping of the Evangelical imagination I'd like to thank our sponsors our friends at Brazos press and Eileen and Dennis backy for their generous partnership in sponsoring today's event we so appreciate your generosity and making this program possible and we're also delighted that so many of you I think there's over 1700 who have registered for today's program and just really appreciate the honor of your time and attention would also like to give a special shout out to those of you who are joining us for the very first time I think we had over 180 first-time registrants as well as our International viewers we have nearly 200 of you who have registered from at least 39 different countries that we know of rating ranging from Fiji and Finland to Singapore and South Africa so if you haven't already done so drop us a note in the chat feature let us know where you're uh where you're viewing from it's always fun for us to see just the diversity of people all over the globe and if you are one of those first-time attendees or otherwise new to the work of the Trinity Forum we seek to provide a space for leaders to Grapple with the big questions of life in the context of faith and offer opportunities like this one to do so and to not only grapple with those big questions but to come to better know the author of the answers and we hope today's conversation will be a small taste of that for you today one of our aims at the Trinity forum is to invite examination of and conversation on the formative practices images stories and ideas which shape our thinking and our imagination and in turn ultimately form our character and our life all of us are deeply shaped by the metaphors and stories we use to understand and make sense of the world and our experience in it so often these stories and metaphors are so pervasive is to be invisible to us we simply simply think of them as Givens much like a fish that doesn't know that it's wet but our guest today invites us to reflect on and in some cases reconsider some of the stories and ideas that have permeated the waters in which we swim and form the currents of our thought particularly in matters of faith in her most recent book The Evangelical imagination she analyzes the art history and stories that have shaped modern evangelicalism both for good and for ill in hopes of untangling that which is essentially Christian and timeless from the cultural assumptions of our times it's a worthy and indeed timely Challenge and there are a few who can make it with a literary Insight astutinous or clarity as our guest today Dr Karen swallow Pryor Karen is a scholar writer professor of literature and I am very proud to say a senior fellow of the Trinity forum as a writer she has written frequently on literature culture ethics and ideas for the Atlantic The Washington Post first things a Vox Christianity Today and many other outlets serves as a monthly columnist for Religion News service a contributing editor for Comet magazine and the podcast host for Jane and Jesus which examines the Christian themes in Jane Austen's writings she's also the author of several book length works including booked literature in the heart of me Fierce convictions the extraordinary life of Hannah Moore her wonderful book on reading well finding the good life of the great books which we invited her here for a previous online conversation as well as her newly released work the Evangelical imagination how stories images and metaphors created a culture and crisis which we've invited here her here today to discuss Karen welcome thank you so much for having me Cherie you bet it's great to have you and I love the wallpaper behind you too that's fantastic so as we start out I want to ask you just about the the title itself and what is an Evangelical imagination I'm assuming this is a lot more than just Hobbits and Narnia um what are you meaning when you talk about the Evangelical imagination yeah that's a great question and I certainly am talking about much more than what we think of when we think of the sort of imaginative artists that evangelicals tend to like um so I you know I do talk a lot in the beginning about just what I mean by Evangelical and I draw on the historical definitions I know that's a contested term and something we could spend a lot of time talking about but what I'm talking about in terms of the imagination is not just our individual imaginations which I do address and I do remind the reader that simply Being Human and having an imagination an imaginative capacity is a reflection of our being made in God's image so that's an important part of what it means to be human a wonderful part of what it means to be human but more than just our own individual image making capacities or our own individual imaginations we actually have what the philosopher Charles Taylor calls social imaginaries so an imaginary is he defines it is just like a pool of collective inherited traditional ideas Concepts metaphors stories uh myths and legends that we are handed down to us and are part of the way that we think and think about life but they aren't necessarily conscious they can he calls them precognitive so there's they're sort of lurking under the surface and yet they're still informing and driving our expectations our hopes our desires and our Visions for the good life and all communities have them and there isn't just one and evangelicals who have existed as a movement across the world for 300 years of inherited their own set of of these metaphors and images yeah now you're of course writing this as a literature Professor someone who's written a lot about um about reading and writing and um and also someone who's written about one of the great Evangelical reformers Hannah Moore who presumably played a role in helping to develop that Evangelical imagination but the subtitle of your book is also how stories images and metaphors created a culture and crisis so I'd love to hear from you um what led you to write this book what's the crisis that we are in and how do you see it being related to the Evangelical imagination oh you you pose those questions so well because it hits on you know everything that went into making this book um because I began as I was completing my PhD work with a deep study of Hannah Moore uh a friend of William Wilber horse and a prominent Evangelical in the late 18th and 19th century in England uh a strong voice for abolition and social reform and so when I studied evangelicalism in that period in its first century or so I discovered my own Heritage my own tradition who I was as an Evangelical uh and had and found such positive wonderful examples of evangelicals in history like Wilberforce and more and yet as an Evangelical living in the 21st century um like many other people it just seems like evangelicalism today is understood and defined differently uh than it has been over those 300 years and the term Evangel has been in headlines and in surveys and polls and in the news and and very contested and controversial and so for me it has been almost kind of a personal crisis to go from studying this Rich wonderful history of the Evangelical movement not not perfect not not you know without its flaws but seeing what it's become today and you know I still am an Evangelical um and so like I said that for me this was a personal crisis but there are so many books that are being written on the things that have happened you know in the past decade the past half century the past Century most of them are sociological or historical or even theological or cultural or political um but as you said my background is literature and art and culture and that's how I've studied evangelicalism through all of these years and I kind of wanted to just say well how does the our imagination our individual imaginations and our Collective imaginations how do those things affect how we see ourselves as evangelicals how we're acting now how we've acted in the past what what are the good ideas and Concepts and metaphors from the past that started out as positive developments but have perhaps been distorted or become negative and that was that's really what the book does is it just unpacks several of the key images metaphors and ideas that I find Central to evangelicalism over its past 300 years and look at what's good about them what why they wrote A Rose and how they've perhaps gone bad and created this this crisis is an identity crisis it's a political crisis it's a personal crisis it's a church crisis um but I I think it's a moment it's an opportunity for us to um to renew this movement and renew our imaginations yeah you know I think for probably most of the the non-liter majors who are watching you know the the power of story is fairly intuitive even the power of image being extremely intuitive metaphor perhaps a little bit less so you know that seems a little bit more abstract uh and the like and you uh you mentioned a fairly uh powerful illusion I thought to George Orwell's 1984 where um you know it was one of the first steps that were taken to basically um reduce someone's um propensities of freedom is to sort of take away the ability to uh to create or appreciate metaphors so I'd love for you to talk a little bit more about um why metaphor is so important and Powerful uh both of our individual imaginations but also for a social imaginary oh that's a great question and the premise that I sort of start with and explain a little bit in the book is that all language is metaphorical so if we sit with that for a second um because we tend to think of like oh this expression is metaphorical or that and where there's one as literal or this word is literal this one's metaphorical but if we understand that all language is metaphorical in the sense that a word is a sign that points to something that we mean and that's we have different languages so we have different words for different things so at that very basic level we can understand that all words are metaphorical they are not the thing and so if we start there and realize that we when we start talking about metaphor and Senate uh and symbols and all the other parts of speech we learned in in freshman um comp or freshman literature um those are just adding layers of meaning onto the words that we might say are literal but are still metaphorical and so I do give some examples and draw some scholars in the book um to show just how leading our language is with metaphor to the point that we actually even forget it so if I if I this I I always will say I'm going to run to the store and my husband will say well why don't you drive you know he's not even a dad but he's got the dad jokes down so this this if you just stop and think about how many of our everyday common words that we use are actually metaphors but we've forgotten that they're metaphors then we can start thinking about the ones that we recognize as metaphors so one that I start with in the book is is Awakening which you know if we think of a literal meaning of Awakening it means you know when we rise from our sleep yet the Bible talks about Awakening as being like a spiritual awakening or or you know a pricking of the conscience and in America the Evangelical Revival uh was called the Great Awakening there were several great Awakenings so just this word that is so Central to Evangelical experience is Laden with meaning um you know meanings that are in the dictionary but meanings in the way that we use them and apply them in our faith experience in our literature literatures filled with um different references to Awakening and dreaming and sleeping um and that's those meanings are all connected to the Great Awakening um that gave rise to the Evangelical movement in America uh you know in just a moment I want to ask you about some of those metaphors and stories and images that have that have shaped our social imaginary for either good or ill but before that one of the things that you had mentioned in your book and um someone alluded to just in terms of the dangers and downsides of not paying attention um to the social imaginary and its Origins its roots it's sort of feeders is at one point you you wrote in your book I want to quote you that to be a product of a subculture that is to inherit unthinkingly uncritically and assume all of its images metaphors and stories is to plagiarize a faith and that struck me as what really uh an arresting sort of thing to say and would love to hear more of what you mean how um is a lack of thoughtfulness or even kind of interrogation of the imaginary that we have uh you know absorbed equivalent to plagiarizing our faith well of course as an English Professor I think about plagiarism a lot so that was a metaphor that came naturally to me um and in dealing with students who plagiarize over over the years one of the things I've seen is how many different levels of intention there can be in any kind of plagiarism I mean there can be the kind of plagiarism that's straight out cheating the student knows you know he's trying to pull something over uh the wool over my eyes but oftentimes students are plagiarizing because they actually just don't really don't know how to uh handle carefully the work and words of others and incorporate into their own and and develop as thinkers or how to document or cite or just be clear about what belong you know what idea comes from what source and what idea comes from from them and it just struck me that this is how our our faith experience can often be we can just absorb and uh inherit ideas and assume that they belong to everyone they belong to us and and without really thinking them through without really um owning them in that sense and if we don't interrogate if we don't examine unexamined assumptions um then in a way we're just taking something that belonged to someone else um there's a great one of my favorite Works um to teach to study to read I highly recommend is the 1644 1644 pamphlet by John Milton called areopagitica in which he lays out a foundation that be later used in America for free speech um and in this track the very Puritan and I'm sorry to any of my Catholic friends on the call but very anti-catholic this is the English Civil Wars he uh is opposing censorship by the government and he's actually saying that we should read her radical Works um and he because he's so that we can reason and discover truth and he says if you adopt a belief I'm paraphrasing if you adopt a belief simply because your pastor tells you it is so that is your heresy and so even Milton the Puritan um was encouraging Christians to examine beliefs examine opposing ideas he says if we don't as heresy I'm saying if we don't it's plagiarism interesting and how does one go about doing that so if someone's listening being like exactly how do I interrogate uh what seems to be an idea or even perhaps more um intimidatingly what does it mean to interrogate an aspect of one's Faith yeah I mean that's that's a a word interrogate is a word that has some negative connotations but there are a lot of other words we could use we could just use you know we could talk about being curious and asking um and I and I recognize I mean this is my own problem this is a human problem that often we we don't even know what we don't know so we don't even know what questions to ask um and one example of that I give in the book is how you know I was a well-grown adult in a PhD program before I learned from a presbyterian friend of mine that not everyone interprets the Rapture in the Bible the same way that they're different and I just want my mind was blown I was like oh I didn't know that there were different interpretations I thought the one I had been taught was what everyone believed and was the only way to read the Bible and so that was an accidental uh sort of Discovery and that can happen to to us oftentimes but we can also be intentional about it and I'm not suggesting everyone has to be uh formally trained Theologian or a scholar um but just simply listening to other believers reading other books and and not just other believers you know in our own churches but in different denominations or in different places across the globe we have so much to teach one another and just recognizing that the fact that so much of what we think is true or fact is an assumption um just even recognizing that can help us to begin to look for okay so what really is eternal Transcendent universal truth and what is an assumption or preference or tradition that's what the whole book is about and that's really a way of of living our life and and growing and grow our faith I think I think since so one of the things I wanted to ask you about were some of the stories images metaphors that you mentioned in your book you devote different chapters to uh different metaphors or approaches uh and ask you a little bit about why you chose them and what you kind of see as the downstream effects of it and one that I was actually surprised to see was about sentimentality um oh I say surprise I mean I hadn't thought about this as uh kind of being so immersed in victorianism and was um you know interested by essentially the tie that you drew between what you called a cult of sensibility and Thomas Kinkade um tell us how you got there yeah okay so of course this is you know I'm coming at this book from my area of expertise which is 18th and 19th century British literature then art and culture and so there was a literal movement in the late 18th century called The Cult of sensibility which was it was kind of a reaction against the rationalism that defined the enlightenment I mean we you know we tend to go to one extreme to another as human beings so rationalism was one extreme The Cult of sensibility was a movement within art and literature that emphasized um the idea that if we can if we respond emotionally to some to the to an artistic work to a movie or play or poem with with emotion that's a sign of our own virtue um if anyone is any fan of Jane Austen out there you know Sense and Sensibility this is what she was talking about Austin was sort of making gentle fun of the ex you know anyone who would extremely emphasize sense or reason or sensibility and emotion you know so we have um Eleanor and Marianne um and so in the Victorian age if you know anything about Victorian art or Victorian literature and most people are at least passingly familiar with Charles Dickens for example uh great Victorian novelist I love his works but they definitely tend toward the sort of sentimental side that's actually how his work became so popular and affected so much change because he affected people's emotions about orphans and widows and the poor which was good um but he did that through affecting our emotions um and but Victorian art is not that was popular it was not high art it trafficked in kind of the emotions and I think most people who've seen any Deborah Evangelical art would realize it does the same it tends to be very emotional emphasize the emotions uh we a lot you know it's it's so common to criticize Chris bad Christian art today that is a cliche I say in the book and and and that criticism is well deserved but what I'm pointing out in the book is there's a long history of this it didn't emerge in a vacuum and I do use as sort of the central example um the paintings of of Thomas Kinkade um who you know his painting his art is very sentimental and soft and glowing and and makes us you know makes us feel warm and comfortable but it's not only the pictures themselves but it's actually the way they were produced they're mass produced in a factory um they're owned by you know in millions and millions of of different venues and places uh and so it's not just a matter of of developing a taste that might skew toward the sentimental and be distorted but also just the commercialization of art um and the the result on him as a person in that process someone who started out as a very talented and skilled artist and just kind of sold out uh to what could make a lot of money and his life ended you know in a very dark way with with you know arrest and accusations of of sexual assault and um and my point that I'm trying to make not not to um you know to to to make him uh more of a bad example than needs to be but just to say if we do not have a holistic understanding of our ourselves as human beings and our faith and we emphasize emotion or reason or or anything at the expense of the other um it we are not going to be healthy um ourselves and we're not going to um put forward a healthy holistic true version of our faith another one of the metaphors or images um ideas that you talked about was that of Empire and of course um you know colonialism the British Empire certainly peaked during the Victorian era which is you know obviously the time of the that evangelicalism really kind of grew as well uh as it kind of tracked so much of the Victorian movement as you've talked about but you know while it's very easy to see in the past how um colonialism Empire uh and a evangelicalism could kind of become entangled in that uh there were kind of explicit justifications for uh colonialism in terms of you know bringing missions to to new places uh at this point many empires have fallen um you know even if Empire building has not and if anything evangelicalism is growing the most in the global South which is historically been more likely to be colonized rather than the colonizer um so would be interested in how you think this part you know of Empire building so still colors our Evangelical imaginations yeah that's I mean that is really really um path that I kind of Trace in the book the book um the Victorian age was which was so influenced by the Evangelical movement was the age of the British Empire that you know the empire about which it was said the sun would never set but it did right so the British Empire has fallen um and you know America has taken its place as a world power and America is largely defined by evangelicals and so evangelicals don't go out and colonize lands anymore um but we do still have that that way of thinking that social imaginary that is about Empire Building uh my friend Scott Giovanni he's the one who developed the term it uh Evangelical industrial complex to describe just sort of the the huge the publishing industry the mega church industry the way that you know that that uh celebrity pastors are turned into Russell authors um and it's all tied into capitalism and to you know money making machines and it's all entangled together in ways that are very similar to the way in which as you mentioned earlier that the good work of missions in the 19th century didn't happen apart from the kind of commercial and trade Endeavors undertaken by the British Empire was all tangled up together and so we do we are the part of the crisis that I mentioned in this in the subtitle of this book is the crisis of certain Empires falling um within the church within evangelicalism and we do see evangelicalism growing much more in other areas of the globe America is no longer really leading evangelicalism a lot of people have to wake up to that fact and so I think our brothers and sisters around the world who were traditionally the colonized um can maybe take a lesson from us and see you know so much Empire Building is is inevitably doomed to fail in the same way that building the Tower of Babel uh was destined to fail in the Old Testament um it's all very complicated and and this is the whole point is that we do so much good together as institutions and even as Empires but we can also do so much Evil by using that same power and those same resources for the wrong ends or in the wrong way there's several other metaphors and stories that would love to discuss we're probably not going to have the time but whether it's the angel in the house or self-improvement or what have you but one of the things I wanted to ask you about is like you know evangelicalism itself was a reform movement you know it was one that really stressed uh true conversion over just sort of an inherited Faith um you know discipleship over nominalism and the like um you know and now kind of we're at a point where as you put in your your subtitle there is a crisis uh it would be interested in your thoughts on what new stories and metaphors and images are needed for our current crisis that is such a good question I mean and some people are even saying that the word Evangelical which again is you know a word we might say is literal but also it's metaphorical that that there are many people who are rejecting that label um because they think we need a new one and and and that may be true and and I think historians will someday write about this moment in history and they may assign a label or a term or a metaphor for what's happening um at this moment I do in the book rely on Reformation I'm not original or creative or imaginative enough to think of a of a new one um but I do call for like a new Reformation uh and talk about that in the book um and again maybe maybe there is a better term a couple of of ideas that come to mind again they're they're not new ones but I think um of you know using the word Community or family to describe the church and to describe our relationship to one another as opposed to denomination or as opposed to tribe which is also a metaphor that has uh it has misused and has been been appropriated in in wrong ways um I'm actually writing a piece right now not to give much away but um I'm thinking of of a couple of metaphors for this essay that I'm working on about this sort of described history of the 2000 year history of the church and the first one this is you know this is not new this is this this is so basic but I can't stop thinking about it is just the cross um and I don't mean you know there was a physical literal cross upon which Christ was crucified and died but that that literal cross is the metaphorical shape of our faith um the cruciformity is the way we are supposed to live uh and I think we don't think about that image enough or we haven't In This Moment enough because we have we have in modern in the Modern Age which evangelicalism is directly a product of modernity we tend to be more shaped by the metaphor of the machine um the machine that brought us the printing press which is wonderful because the printing press brought us the Bible that could be mass produced and brought us literacy and yet we've taken that literal machine used it for good ends but also used it as a way to think about how we do Church how we count the numbers how we increase uh and multiply uh the money and uh and increase the number of viewers and those things um and so that's a metaphor the machine metaphor that has defined modernity needs to replace be replaced with something that I think is is uh is more more open and and more reflective of the gospel and the one that I'm thinking of is cloud I'm thinking of the cloud of the right cloud of witnesses throughout the church age I'm thinking about the cloud in the Old Testament that guided the people clouds are clouds are are nebulous and they're they're they're they're a little mystical and mysterious and they aren't very tangible and easy to grasp hold of but I think that's the kind of metaphor we need in this moment where we have dark clouds over us and yet we can remember that God has used um the cloud throughout his history with his people to guide us to comfort us to show us the way um and so uh we can you know we can we can follow his Cloud rather than and The Cloud of the great crowd of witnesses rather than feel the weight of the dark cloud in the moment of this crisis that we have so that's I'm just just like thinking out loud about different images and metaphors that um that might guide us forward no that's great in just a moment we're going to take questions from our viewers but before that one of the things that sort of struck me as you were talking is um you know there's the metaphors that kind of the are the images kind of what we pay attention to but then there's also the act of attention itself uh in that you know our imagination is filled in shape uh by what we we what we perceive and what we perceive is generally what we pay attention to and a lot of really the spiritual disciplines uh is are about how we knowingly direct our attention um you know and thus kind of form our our loves and our um our orientation our imagination so one thing I wanted to ask in addition to just like what new metaphors do we need what are we paying either undo or insufficient attention to and what um liturgies in a sense do you see as beneficial in Reviving or reforming um our own imaginations as well as our social imaginary well even just asking that question I think is at least half of the solution right because we live in an attention economy and it's so interesting that you know the ancient um and medieval Christians um understood the necessity of these disciplines that you talked about that we have to train ourselves um and and and cultivate habits for uh being being attentive to the right things that the good things um and you know the social media people who create these these uh these sources and these algorithms they all know that they all know that that exercise and habit and they're they're developing ways to draw our attention in endlessly down the rabbit hole to keep our attention and so they're doing this the same thing for different reasons that the Ancients understood that we needed to train and focus and you know habituate our attentions uh so I think we have to we have to just stop and recognize that that we are our attention is being drawn and distracted in many ways and it will either be put toward the things that we choose to put it toward or it will just be drawn mindlessly to the things that other people want to pull it toward and so we have to be in tension on for some of us that means maybe like being intentional about taking more time to read read God's word read good books of any kind hold it in our hands and and look at it for more than 10 minutes and engage with the text it might mean spending more time outside in nature enjoying um creation it might mean writing Reflections on these things but just sustaining our attention on what is good true and beautiful in intentional ways um some of us do this habitually I I do do that as a habitually because I've lived my life around that but even I spend too much time on social media paying attention to the wrong things so even I have to be intentional more intentional about paying more attention to the good true and beautiful and there are so many ways to do it I've just given a few examples uh but the point is that that it goes against our human nature and it goes against all sorts of vital pressures so we have to make an effort and we have to be individual oh well I see lots of questions lined up so we'll turn to some questions from our viewers our first question comes from Carlene Byron who asked can you expand further on how you've observed Global uh let's see global Christianity helping Western Christianity develop an expanded imagination or ways it could if we were more open to it that that's such a great question um I I think for example uh the the Luzan uh movement um that has a conference coming up next year um that has invited Christian leaders from across the globe to write papers to convene to their perspectives I was actually part of that of writing a short paper from with Believers from different places across the globe so that's a formal movement I think this is one of the gifts of social media actually is that social media allows us very easily to hear the perspective objectives in the words of Believers from other places around the world we don't even have to like go to the library and get our book we can just you know pay attention to you know a a Twitter thread by someone from halfway around the world and I know my own uh you know again my my expertise is very anglo-centric and and America is second so I have a very narrow Focus um but even in my book I talk about um just befriending a friend of mine that I met on social media who shared his perspective as someone of Indian descent who whose people were colonized and whom Chris you know European Christians say uh they had the gospel delivered too when in fact his people were Christians from some of the very first centuries and so um they already had the faith and it wasn't uh Europeans who who brought it to them and just hearing things like that it it enlarges our understanding because we do we are given just part of the story and that that's not a conspiracy it's just you know that's just how that's being human um when we tell a story we're just telling it from our perspective and uh the way we get a fuller completer story is to listen to more stories so interesting question from an anonymous attendee who asked do you have concerns about the possible impact of AI on the Evangelical imagination I have so many concerns that I don't even want to think about AI I just um I you know I just I I I that's a huge concern I mean I I from everything that I understand about AI which is very little um I think that AI is going to do you know represent a moment in human history that is perhaps I mean it will be no less than the development of the printing press which I mentioned before and that the impact that it had it probably will be toner 100 times that um you know if we think in terms of of human history and in the big chunks we talk about pre-modern modern and maybe post-modern and whatever AI is is going to bring about transhumanism and and the blur all the distinctions between what is real what is artificial um it will certainly change um human society and um Evangelical and this is kind of part of what I'm trying to show in this book is that evangelicals are like all humans creatures of culture and so Christians and evangelicals will be affected by it and this is why so this book is not just about examining the unexamined assumptions of evangelicals I'm kind of trying to model how we as human beings also you know examine the water that we're swimming in that we don't even realize I mean it's just part of Being Human to be creatures of culture uh and this will be our task no matter who we are or where we live um and you know I I don't know I mean that the future the AI brings will I'm sure be very unrecognizable to those of us who are alive in this time and moment you know so question from Cherie Bellamy who asked how does the need for certainty challenge our ability to engage biblical metaphors in the diverse ways they can be read and interpreted does this need inhibit the imagination I think it absolutely does I mean it is human to desire certainty some of us are wired to be you know more comfortable with less certainty but also we we exist in communities that teach us how much certainty is required or needed and so part of I mean that's part of a social imaginary is that we must be certain about this or we must be certain about that I think the Bible is you know does give us some things that we can be very certain about um and the church bothers you know wrote Creed that that are ones that Christians across time and um history and geography also Embrace um and then yeah then I think we're just enculturated by our communities about which things we can have a certain degree of a certainty about which ones we don't need to and that's when we can start listening to other other communities and and Believers um to decide I mean sometimes we just have to make a decision too about how which things we can be certain about and which were things we aren't um and the more we are immersed in communities that that require certainty um I think about extra things I think um it does have a it does inhibit the work of the imagination so Ted Hedley asked in painting evangelicals have little tradition to draw on pun intended could you comment on the pros and cons of revitalizing art forms from Christian history that originated outside one's own theological understanding um that's a great question and actually I do this myself with literature um and I teach you know that we that with any art or any with any art um we want to look not just for the content but look at the form uh and so so because I believe with Augustine that um we should embrace truth wherever it is found that we can read The Works of great literature who that might be written by unbelievers but still contain great truths about the human condition and reality is God made it uh and so the same would be true of art I mean I you know if I'm getting my car fixed um I want it to be fixed by someone who's developed skills in that area uh regardless of of Christian belief now Christian belief might affect you know his ethical business practices so that it's not that that's unimportant but certainly anyone who is trying to develop skills including artists just um should draw on the best that is out there and there's that pun again so uh absolutely yes so a question from Jim Meyer who asked what are your concerns about Christian nationalism and the Christian imagination a Christian nationalism is actually a great example of something that is you know developed from an imaginary right I mean I think I think Christian nationalism has developed from some unexamined assumptions that maybe are now I mean some people are examining them and explicitly embracing them but other people you know I I found myself in this whole conversation sort of asking okay so why why do I reject the so-ins what I you know I almost think instinctively what parts of my imaginary are there that make me understand no I I like I don't um think that you know we should be a Christian Nation as they say it and understand it because I believe in um Soul autonomy and Liberty and those things um and I so I think it's that issue along with many others are is a great example of how powerful and imaginary is because something like that that's nameable and um and memeable and is going viral emerges out of an imaginary that holds certain myths and ideas and Concepts already that makes that sort of prime or fertile ground or idea like Christian National so um a different social imaginary or an expanded social imaginary will help counter um the fruit of that kind of thinking oh so a question from an anonymous attendee who asks deconstruction which they put in quotes has been discussed in Evangelical circles a lot in the past few years is an interrogation of the social imaginary similar to the process of deconstruction that is a great question um so it uh you know I will look at the word deconstruction in sort of a literal way um in the way that that we see it being used um in by Christians or you know or ex-christians or whatever is you know they are taking something that has been built or constructed and taking it apart um and in that sense um I think the word can be neutral I think we have a we have a negative associations with it because many who do the work of deconstruction are not reconstructing their faith right they're they're leaving it so it's just deconstruction um but I actually believe that if you know and I use this this uh metaphor in the opening of the book um which was inspired by the deconstruction movement out there is that you know I said the Evangelical evangelicalism is a house and as a metaphor uh and like any house it has you know it has floor beams it has Rafters it has wall studs whatever I I asked my husband knows building so I asked when I was writing it what the right words were to use were and they're all there under the surface and then we cover them up with with paper and paint and tile and ceilings and moldings um and we don't think about the structure unless we want to change the decor which you know that that can be okay but sometimes we you know we want to change the decor just for the reasons that I write about in the chapter on Improvement they aren't it's not necessary it's just part of keeping up with the Joneses uh but sometimes we have to look underneath because something's wrong I mean we don't know what is wrong so we do have to take off those layers and if there are Parts underneath that need repair that need to be repaired if they're parts that are rotten they need to we need to get rid of them and replace them and for those who are deconstructing again because my because I have taught Evangelical students for 25 years I have seen and this is this is really where this book came from is is from teaching these students I have seen these students believe that they were taught now again it may not maybe they misunderstood or maybe it wasn't clear but things were taught to them that were cultural that they were told were Christian and when they realize that these cultural things um now I joke about oh learning the my interpretation of the Rapture wasn't the one everyone had like you know that I thought that I think that's funny um some respond that's not funny that's like a betrayal um and if that's not true then none of it's true and they abandon the theme and you know we're all different not everyone's going to do that but many are and that is why it is so necessary to disentangle or separate or interrogate and distinguish between the cultural and the Christian and this is not to say that the cultural is bad I Love Culture there can be something you know so a dress code a school might have a dress code that is business and that's fine that's not wrong but it is wrong to say that that business dress code is Christian and that's a very small example but you can see the confusion that sets in when someone discovers oh wait a minute Christians around the globe Don't Wear Ties so it must not be Christian um and there's so much of that so much of that subculture that the deconstructors are throwing out the baby with the bath water because they can't see the baby the bath water is so dirty and so this is the what I want to do in this book and for all of us is to save the baby but get rid of the bathwater um so a question from Dave Moore who asked developing one's imagination as an attractive proposition yet with all growth comes an inherent threat the need to change how much are our shrunken imaginations a result of simply not wanting to change well assuming that's not a rhetorical question which it very well could be because it's it I I think there's you know there's an answer in the question um you know I I think I think that probably is true that that we are resistant to change and I and I want to say that that is we live in a culture in a world that is changing so rapidly that I actually I don't blame people for being resistant to change and so that's why perhaps the change that we can imagine together doesn't you know we do need some dramatic change but there are ways that we can that we can change where we're not even aware of it I mean if we're watching a beautiful film or reading a good book or attending a beautiful concert um you know it's not like we're sitting there saying oh I'm being changed um but it does change us if just for that moment and then we do it again we go to another concert we see another play um we take another walk when we build those practices and habits and and and take our eyes away from the destructive and the negative and the in the Via so um it does it does change us um and we can encourage others to participate in that just because those things are good in and of themselves any change they bring about is a byproduct and um what we want to pursue is the good for his own sake and then the change will come oh in a question from C Ben Mitchell uh who asked and as much as the imagination is shaped through practices and cultural embeddedness what should conscientious evangelicals do and where should they do it if they want to reform their own imagination well you know you can do it by reading good books I will always give that answer um but we can also do those sorts of things in community one of the things well here this is a what we're doing right here is a prime example um these online conversations started out of sort of the necessity that brought about by covid you know people were home and we weren't able to do things and I remember when Cherie reached out about beginning this and and we're continuing these conversations um again it requires intentionality and uh but I do think I do think doing these things in community I'm even reading a book as being in community because books don't emerge out of a vacuum uh and and I do see you know I think this we are our appetites for digital media to collectively are becoming sort of um uh saturated uh or being overloaded and so I do see a hunger that is developing for real Community for good art good literature uh and so that's good news for the church because we can provide we can try to we can aim to provide it we can at least try um and I think people are would be receptive to any as this is this online conversation goes to any efforts to create opportunities and spaces for these things to happen so it's a really great opportunity for us as individuals and as a church to tap into a hunger that many know they have but a lot don't even know they don't even know that hunger is there that's great and a final question from an anonymous attendee who asked do you think the spiritual disciplines of prayer scripture reading Etc work to ground our imagination and protect us almost prophylactically from the dangers you've discussed I do I do think so um but I I still think that that's not enough because we are you know so so just like you know being channeling Richard Baxter the 17th century Puritan who said you know read scripture then with the time you have left read books about scripture and then if you have any time after that you can read for fun and he actually meant you won't have any time after that um we as I said before we live in culture and so we are going to be surrounded by cultural artifacts um so so we still have to choose and be intentional about the cultural artifact that we surround ourselves with or immerse ourselves in after we read scripture and pray and have devotions um and so so there's always going to be time that we're not doing that and so if we are more careful and more intentional about the human culture that we take in then that will um you know we'll we'll produce better fruit on that ground made fertile through scripture prayer and devotion Karen thanks so much this has been a lot of fun and in just a moment I'm going to give you the last word but before that a few things just to share with all of you who are watching first immediately after we finish here we'll be sending around an online feedback form we'd love for you to fill it out I say this every time but we read every one uh we try to take your ideas and your comments to heart to make these programs ever more valuable and as a small token of our appreciation for taking the time to do that and it's only like five questions it won't take long we'd love to send you a code for a free Trinity Forum reading download of your choice there are several that we would recommend that actually pertain very much to this conversation including a few of our readings that Karen swallow prior has written the introduction to including selections from Pride and Prejudice or Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol we'd also like to recommend spirit and Imagination which is on the topic of imagination and features the poetry of Samuel Taylor college with an introduction by Malcolm guide as well as bright evening star with an introduction by Lucy Lucy Wright so would welcome your comments and encourage you to fill out that form in addition tomorrow we'll be sending around an email which includes a link to today's the video of today's online conversation so just want to alert you to that that email will be coming we'll also have a bunch of different readings recommended resources if you want to go further into this topic so be on the lookout and please share this video with others start a conversation explore your own social imaginaries that have have comprised some of your um perhaps unexamined assumptions and do so in community as Karen was talking about in addition we would love for all of you watching to join the community of people that help Advance the mission of the Trinity Forum to cultivate curate and disseminate the best of Christian thought and you can do that by becoming part of the Trinity Forum Society so members of the Trinity form Society in addition to being part of that Community there's also several benefits which include a subscription to our quarterly readings a subscription to our what we're reading daily list of curated reading recommendations and as a special incentive for those of you who are watching today with your new membership or gift of a hundred dollars or more we will send you a signed copy of Karen's new book The Evangelical imagination so uh encourage you to Avail yourself of that opportunity and join our small community coming up later this month we will be hosting both in person and online events we'll be hosting an online reading group around Flannery O'Connor's short story Revelation on Tuesday August 29th at 12 30 PM Eastern Standard Time there should be a link in the chat feature if that's something that interests you to sign up for and if you happen to be in the DC area we will be hosting an in-person reading group on Wednesday August 30th also stay tuned for more information about new online conversations coming up this fall featuring New York Times columnist David Brooks a psychologist and psychiatrist Kurt Thompson and others and if you would like to sponsor an online conversation please let us know there'll be a question in the online feedback form we would love to talk with you and finally as promised Karen the last word is yours thank you so much Sheree this has been so great um so my last word is just this we all know that seeing is believing so we must pay attention to what we're seeing who we're seeing what we're not seeing who we're not seeing and try to see more so that our beliefs so that what we believe is Fuller truer more good better and More Beautiful Aaron thanks so much thank you thank you to all of you for joining us have a great weekend [Music]

Channel: The Trinity Forum

Views: 2,358

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Id: AYwXoH5BpEI

Length: 59min 51sec (3591 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 14 2023