Ken Myers
Crossway, 2012/1989, 213 pp., $17.99

“I believe that the challenge of living with popular culture may well be as serious for modern Christians as persecution and plagues were for the saints of earlier centuries.”

This was the argument Myers, creator of Mars Hill Audio Journal, made in his acclaimed 1989 book, which has just been published without change other than the addition of a new introduction.

So, how does the book hold up nearly a quarter century later? Overall, rather well, though in the new release of All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes references to videocassettes and other ancient technologies can be annoying. (Myers said he considered making revisions, but regretted that such an effort would require rewriting the entire book.)

Following the admonition of Paul, who wrote that not everything that is permissible is constructive (1 Corinthians 10), Myers warns readers against pop culture’s greatest flaws: that its forms may cancel out any redemptive content its users seek to convey; that its populist and pleasure-inducing forms are flawed copies of the high culture (classical music, art) that it effectively has replaced; and that it threatens the very foundations of Western civilization. At times, Myers seems to be a cross between your cranky old grandmother and an Old Testament prophet, but he also possesses a timeless wisdom that many of today’s Christian leaders may have neglected. “If our cultural lives are sick, it’s likely to be an impediment to our spiritual lives,” he writes.

Myers writes to encourage Christians to think critically about the pop culture they consume. If he sounds a bit grumpy at times, there’s no arguing his plea that Christians strive “to expect more from our cultural lives, not less.”

If this book is not for you, try an issue of the Mars Hill Audio Journal, which has been analyzing and critiquing high and low culture for more than a decade through thoughtful, NPR-style segments.