Categories: uncategorized
Date: 31 May 2012 19:11:03
Tom Sine @ Greenbelt 2002 was one where I not only heard the talk but I also purchased the book Mustard Seed Vs McWorld Reinventing Life and Faith for the Future. The talk that I have chosen Mustard Seed Vs McWorld - Rediscovering God's purposes for the future is on one level not an ideal one to have chosen for this type of thing because it involved alot of activities and so the recording contains gaps and silences. That said there is the opportunity for reflection of your own in those silences.
The theme of the talk is taking a look at what is culturally influencing us and challenging the assumptions our behaviour is then based on because Sine indicates our behaviours are often incorporating secular values based around global consumption rather than alternative gospel values. Today it may be hard to see what is new or different about what Sine is saying....but a decade ago it was more fresh. The talk then needs to be heard on two levels, firstly as something which is itself culturally relevant to its time and secondly something which is still challenging to us today because the same message is important for us to act upon, although our reflections will need to take different forms.
For me a couple of things came out of what he was saying the importance of fun and the use of art. What Sine was arguing was that Christians need to gain a grasp of the situationist and agitprop approaches to change and dissent with the main stream culture and apply it in a Christian way. (He didn't refer to those secular influences but within social movement theory those are the artistic approaches which have sought to subversively / creatively use art in the way he describes). This involves using a Christian starting point which is based upon looking at a range of passages which talk of the Kingdom of God and using this theological tool as the alternative to the philosophical starting point used by the secular left.
One thing that was interesting was that he picked up on the term "excellence in education" and unpacked what this means in terms of the cultural values involved when New Right theorists and others use it. Now, I found this challenging because I do believe in the term but had not unpacked the implication of it and how that it focuses almost exclusively on developing the economic chances of young people - giving a corresponding set of values.
Within the latter part of his talk, prior to getting his audience to engage with a set of scripture passages, he talked alot about Christians finding a more festive life and learning to celebrate more. Within this he gave a vision of the way that churches and Christians needed to change and move into a new culture.
There were a couple of things that struck me as I listened to the talk - the way that in some ways he was talking about what Occupy sought to do and the feelings of dissonance I had experienced at times within my Occupy experience as a Christian who was engaged in the same activities as other Occupiers but coming from a position of having a different motivating / ideological position to many others. This difference in motivations and stuff is something which is picked up in this Ad Busters discussion on Occupy which I found. There is an interesting comment I discovered in the conversation following the main articles which one wonders if it might have been made by Sine himself - certainly it is somebody who uses a similar language.
The second thing which struck me was how the culture and technology have developed in the last decade and how the church is seeking to engage with that culture and technology. On one level there is some really exciting stuff occurring which is using the technology and seeking to do so in a way which artistically engages but on the other there seems to be an incorporation of the global corporate digital culture which is bringing more of the values of it into the church without challenging it. There seems to be a school of thought that says we need to get a handle on the digital culture so that we can use it in the same way as the world to do mission effectively - without challenging the values which are under-pinning its development and growth. Listening to this talk and reflecting on it I found myself feeling somewhat uncomfortable and challenged about the work of some people I respect.
The final conclusion I reached listening are that there are no easy answers to the questions this talk throws up. The central thing is that we need to be both engaging with and challenging the culture we are part of on the basis of a different paradigm to secular society. How we do this is a difficult question that we need to explore on both a corporate and individual basis.