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Popcultured: Thinking Christianly About Style, Media and Entertainment Paperback – July 11, 2013

by Steve Turner (Author)

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There's no avoiding popular culture―we've been enculturated into it. What does it mean to be faithful Christians in a pop culture world? How do we think Christianly about celebrity and leisure? Some Christians try to abstain from "worldly" pursuits, while others consume culture indiscriminately, assuming it has little effect on them. But if Christ is Lord of all of life, then there ought to be Christian ways to engage with and appreciate popular culture. Steve Turner has spent his career chronicling and interviewing people from the worlds of music, film, television, fashion, art and literature. Now he provides an insider's guide to a wide range of entertainment pursuits, with biblical frameworks for understanding pop culture genres and artifacts. Turner explores

how movies use redemptive narratives and parables
ways journalistic headlines convey worldview assumptions
differences between famous people in the past and celebrities today
what ideas are communicated through clothing and fashion design
how technology changes our sense of what is real
and much more

God entrusts culture to us and gives us the ability to critique it, enjoy it and create it. This book will help you become a better cultural critic, consumer and creator.

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Who Are We?

Since 1947, InterVarsity Press (IVP) has been publishing thoughtful Christian books that shape both the lives of readers and the cultures they inhabit. Throughout these seventy-five years, our books and authors have established a legacy of speaking boldly into important cultural moments, providing timeless tools for spiritual growth, and equipping Christians for a vibrant life of faith.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Turner offers not only the tools for critical engagement of popular culture, but also an earnest exploration of what it means to consciously and unconsciously participate and create as Christians in the world." -- Publishers Weekly, May 13, 2013

"If both Paul and Jesus could use their cultures as springboards for the Gospel, why shouldn't we? And if we want to follow their examples, this volume by Turner offers a well-informed biblical and theological guide to how we might do it." -- Rev. Dr. Bob Robinson, Latimer Fellowship, 2015

"Many local churches give their members little assistance when it comes to assessing the products of popular culture from a Christian point of view. Those who require help in this area will find much useful material in Steve Turner's Popcultured." -- Christian Librarian, Autumn 2013

". . . this is a discussion all Christians desperately need to have." -- Sue Grise, CBA Retailers + Resources, July 2013

"Steve Turner is our generation's international treasure. Popcultured holds up an entertaining magnifying lens while revealing how the power of pop culture has come to insinuate itself into every aspect our daily lives. Steve reveals how our seemingly mindless surrender to today's trends causes us to breathe the air of whatever wind is blowing--be it in the way that we dress, our taste in music, political consciousness or even our spiritual beliefs. Whatever the fashion, or fleeting fad, we strive to stay apace without stopping to ask ourselves, 'Why?' This is where Steve Turner's Popcultured anchors us in understanding the trends, by providing abiding wisdom and insight so that we might learn to ask the right questions of our times." -- Bobette Buster, film and story guru, and adjunct professor, University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, Peter Stark Program

"Popular culture surrounds us. Film, television, music and new technologies all influence individuals and society. Learning how to engage pop culture thoughtfully and winsomely is part of our Christian calling. In Popcultured, Steve Turner offers cogent insights and practical wisdom that will help readers understand and evaluate popular culture, encouraging spiritual discernment and theological balance." -- Robert Velarde, author of The Wisdom of Pixar

"Steve Turner has proved himself one of the most accessible writers on the interaction of faith and culture. Popcultured is a welcome and lively exploration of what is fast becoming a crucial field." -- Jeremy Begbie, Duke University, author of Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music

"I do not hesitate to recommend this book heartily. There are precious few good books on popular culture from a Christian perspective, and fewer still that are as ambitious and wide-ranging as this one. Turner provides a welcome addition to a seriously underdeveloped field, a field that requires more attention than it typically gets from Evangelicals. This book deserves a wide and enthusiastic readership." -- Ted Turnau, Foundations, 66, May 2014

Review

"Steve Turner has proved himself one of the most accessible writers on the interaction of faith and culture. Popcultured is a welcome and lively exploration of what is fast becoming a crucial field."

-- Jeremy Begbie, Duke University, author of Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ IVP; 6.7.2013 edition (July 11, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 254 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 083083768X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0830837687
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #882,284 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,934 in Christian Social Issues (Books)

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4.4 40 ratings

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Steve Turner

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Steve Turner is the author of Trouble Man: The Life and Death of Marvin Gaye, A Hard Day's, Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Song, Hungry for Heaven: Rock and Roll and the Search for Redemption, Jack Kerouac. Angelbeaded Hipster, and Van Morrison: Too Late to Stop Now. His articles have appeared in Rolling Stone, Mojo, Q, and the London Times. He lives in London with his wife and two children.

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Mark Kilcoyne

Great book!

Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2021

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This is an thought provoking book that challenges your ideologies on Pop-culture. I was pleased with the questions at the end of each chapter and enjoyed the thoughts of Steve Turner!

Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2014

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Turner does a good job engaging the reader and walking through many different areas of culture. I think overall, he does a good job encouraging Christians to actually engage our current culture instead of modern monasticism (where we withdraw from anything of the world). The only thing I feel that Turner could have improved on was how Christians can engage more. He does offer little chunks at the end of every chapter which give you things to try to engage whichever cultural topic he had just discussed, but I feel like this was deficient. Modern Christianity is far from where it needs to be when it comes to engaging our modern culture, so I felt that Turner should've expounded more on the 'practice' side of things a little bit more.

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Felipe L

I loved the thoughtful paragraphs on a number of topics

Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2016

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I loved the thoughtful paragraphs on a number of topics. The questions and activities at the end of each chapter go beyond the lame "What do you think about xxxxx?" type questions. One such activity is to pick up a magazine or newspaper you wouldn't normally read and interact with the various viewpoints. The overall theme is that pop culture contains some powerful aspects that can be used to serve a Christian perspective.

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Gord Wilson

The Medium and the Message

Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2014

I don't know who this book is for. Post-literates (people who don't choose to read) won't read it. There are some thought-provoking questions at the end of the brief chapters, but Turner rightly realizes that they need some back story. The problem with media criticism is one encounters media in the middle (which is what it means), immediately and now, when to get any grip on it one needs to go back to its beginnings. A Canadian Catholic named Marshall McLuhan already said all that in the '60s, but he did so in a way that was sometimes confusing and complex. Unpacking his short, pithy quips leads to much longer studies like this one.

But it's not really a study. Turner is at his best relating his personal stories (which he could do forever as he knows everyone), as he does in his best books like The Gospel According to the Beatles The Gospel According to the Beatles and Imagine Imagine: A Vision for Christians in the Arts . He can't simply do that here because it's an InterVarsity Press book. Therefore it has to be about some mix of culture and faith. The chapter on "popular culture" in the Bible seems to interrupt the book, although it's actually quite good. The Bible doesn't say a lot about what we now consider popular culture, he says, the reason being because it's only existed since the dawn of what McLuhan calls "the electric environment".

I would consider this book an impossible one to write, especially the way Turner breaks it out into different media-- movies, advertising, fashion (which I would not think of including), when it seems to me certain forms of pop culture have more in common than not. He's certainly right to warn the innocent of ulterior motives of writers, hidden agendas in movies, that music is made for money, and the rest of the dark side of being on the receiving end of pop culture. Perhaps for that reason I preferred his book Imagine, about being on the giving side of pop culture. But there's something else here. It seems to me that since the writing of that book and this book, Turner has become untethered. He continually refers to his church, but it doesn't seem to make any difference. I would call him a post-Anglican, except that's just a stereotype I may have since he is British. He may have never been Anglican. But, as many others of us have done, he seems to run up against the problem of being your own pope.

He quotes the right people, like Malcolm Muggeridge, but fails to mention MM's book, Christ and the Media Christ and the Media as a brief but incisive (and shocking, because unexpected) exploration of the same topic. He asks about "good and bad" in relation to pop culture, but knows full well that has been simply explored by Francis Schaeffer in his booklet, Art and the Bible (InterVarsity Press) Art and the Bible (IVP Classics) . Visual art has been explored by Turner's friend and fellow Brit, musician and poet Steve Scott, in Crying for a Vision Crying for a Vision and Other Essays: The Collected Steve Scott Vol. One . The websites to explore seem to be almost randomly cut and pasted from the Internet, and the entire book has a rushed feel to it. I wondered why Turner would use one of the worst Bible translations, the NRSV, when the RSV is one of the best, but one finds out as one reads along. The RSV is not lost in the modern world, however. It is the foundation of the ESV, and the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible is based on the British RSV.

I don't know if other readers will consider this book rambling. It sort of is, but that's the part I like. It's somewhat Steve thinking out loud. Although he confesses his diffidence and misgivings in the introduction, he pretty much opts to charge in, full speed ahead. This produces chapters that seem too telegraphic, sprinkled with anecdotes which seem too few, with overarching conclusions that seem too broad. But there's almost no way to start media criticism except with a question. There's no way to climb a mountain except with a first step. And part of the illusion of media is to seem so massive and all-encompassing, so impenetrable that it becomes synonymous with reality. Turner helps us at least notice the man behind the curtain. And that's a start.

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John T. Berg

Timely analysis of the interface of faith and culture in a 'pop world'

Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 2015

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Steve Turner again turns his attention to the interface between faith (Christian in this case, befitting his own commitments) and 'pop culture', which he has been writing about for over 40 years. Steve is both a great poet and a wise analyst of how music, culture, artistic personalities and faith influence each other -- oh, and also the role of 'the fan' as part of the equation. As always a great job, Steve!

Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2014

Great Book

Excellent Broad Intro To Pop Culture in Theological Perspective

Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2014

Steve Turner is a journalist, writer and poet living in London, England. He has written numerous articles and books that have appeared in places like Rolling Stone and The London Times. He is a perceptive thinker when it comes to the arts, something I was introduced to by one of my theology profs at Dallas who recommend I check out Imagine: A Vision For Christians In The Arts. In his most recent work, Popcultured: Thinking Christianly About Style, Media, and Entertainment, Turner applies that same insight to the broader field of media ecology, specifically when it comes to pop culture.

While there are plenty of books out there on evaluating pop culture from a Christian perspective, I think this book is probably one of the best places to start. I’m partial to Baker’s Engaging Culture and Cultural Exegesis series, but those tend to be more focused on one aspect of pop culture and more academic in tone and focus. Turner’s work here is more broad and accessible to an entry level audience.

The first three chapters following the introduction lay some ground work for thinking about pop culture in general. Chapter 1 explains why we should care, chapter 2 explains what exactly Turner means by “pop culture,” and chapter 3 gives biblical parameters for his analysis. As Turner notes late in chapter 3, “The Christian doesn’t have the option of being passively educated by culture” (54). In other words, if you’re not thinking biblically about the pop culture you consume daily, you’ll be thinking nonetheless. As he concludes, “God entrusts culture to us – the ability to create it, enjoy it, and critique it. The faithful servant does all three” (56).

In that vein, the remaining chapters (until the concluding 14th) each take a slice of pop culture and give a general sketch of how to interact with it. The accent is on enjoying and critiquing it, though Turner does have words of wisdom for practitioners in each field he covers. The first category Turner touches on is “Cinematic Art.” He devotes a later chapter to TV and movies, so this one is focused more on the power of stories told through a visual medium. He rightly notes the redemptive arc pretty much all storytelling embodies and how to read stories well both from a biblical perspective and within the particular avenue of pop culture he is strolling. While I was quite at home in this chapter, the next three were more or less uncharted territory for me personally. Starting in chapter 5, Turner explores journalism, celebrity culture, and fashion in successive chapters. I found his take interesting and informative, other readers will likewise find much food for thought.

Chapter 8 isn’t on a field of pop culture per se, but it is a well needed chapter on the culture of “thrill seeking.” Chapter 9 then turns the eye to comedy and will be particularly eye-opening to anyone not aware that many comedians are making you laugh so its easier to get ideas across and wield influence. This is followed by chapters on advertising, technology, photography, and finally the aforementioned chapter on TV and movies. Turned then wraps up his thoughts in chapter 14 explaining how we can consume discerningly, critique faithfully, and create wisely in whatever pockets of pop culture we find ourselves within.

As I said earlier, this book is probably one of the best, if not the best, starting points for engaging pop culture from a Christian perspective. Turner writes clearly for a general audience but thinks with the wisdom of a scholar. At the end of each chapter is a section of questions for reflection and discussion which would make this a great small group or book club resource. Additionally, Turner offers lists of books from a Christian perspective on that particular topic, as well as general works that are relevant. If that were not enough, he gives a list of “Action Items.” Often these are aimed at practitioners, but sometimes they are just ways general readers could have their eyes opened to the particular things Turner has spent the chapter discussing.

In the end, this is an easy but enjoyable read for anyone who wants to think more critically and Christianly about pop culture. Turner provides a great entry point for further reading in specific topics (technology, movies, journalism, etc.) and will give general readers a good grounding in sound cultural analysis that simultaneously is equipped to commend and critique. One thing missing that I think would have improved the book is a chapter on music. Its absence is somewhat curious considering Turner’s other works. However the overall thrust of this book is on visual culture, so perhaps that is why he doesn’t touch on music, pop or otherwise. Still, this is a valuable read and I would highly recommend it to you.

[I was given a review copy of this book by the publisher]

7 people found this helpful

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Tina King

Met my expectations

Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2018

Great book.

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NJC

Insightful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 12, 2014

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I found this book informative, thought provoking and enlightening. We can sometimes become almost oblivious to the way media influences our thought processes and subsequently our actions and Popcultured draws our attention to what goes on behind the scenes a little, showing us how easily we can be manipulated to think a certain way. Steve reminds us that, as Christians, we don't need to abstain completely from listening to popular music, reading novels, watching TV and so on but we need to do so with discernment. The Bible tells us to be 'In the world but not of the world' and that 'All is permissible but not everything is beneficial'; these were the two verses that sprung to mind as I read this book.
Steves insights and experiences help to make sense of popular culture and show that if we see the world through Gods eyes we can make the right choices and enjoy the benefits these things bring without sacrificing our Christian principles.

One person found this helpful

Alice

Great book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 12, 2014

Verified Purchase

I found this book to be a modern, insightful look at how Christians can, and should, engage with popular culture. Well laid out with discussion points at the end of each chapter - useful for individual readers as well as for group discussions. Highly recommended.

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