The influence of popular culture on American society is unmistakable. As a result, the secular worldview represented by much of media and the arts has become the prevailing view through much of American life -- even among many in the church. Several members of the Union University faculty recently met to discuss the influence of popular culture, and how the church can and should respond. Participating in the roundtable were: Karen Mulder, assistant professor of art, who also serves as art editor for the periodical Christianity Today; Steve Beverly, assistant professor of communication arts, who also hosts a radio program and a web site on game shows; David Burke, associate professor of communication arts and director of many Union theater productions; and Paul Munson, who recently joined Union’s faculty as associate professor of music. The discussion was moderated by Michael Duduit, Union’s Executive Vice President and an associate professor of Christian Studies.

Duduit: We do live in an era in which popular culture seems to be a kind of dominant influence in shaping what we see, what we hear, what we understand — shaping the whole social environment. What do you see as the predominant influences that are shaping the culture in which we are living and working today?

Burke: Music, movies, TV.

Beverly: I would probably say TV largely is the lead because it is the most used of the media. Particularly with younger people, it is the one that they seem to latch on to trends more. Particularly for people that are around high school, middle school and in the college years, they seem to be shaped a lot by television by what they see — by new characters, new environments that occur. Unfortunately, in my opinion, we are seeing them shaped by culture in a fashion that even in the realm of an Christian environment is not terribly good.

I'm not optimistic about it. I really believe that we have hit a stage that it is going to get worse before it gets better and I'm in agreement with what Michael Medved says in this book (Hollywood vs. America), "You don't solve the problem in houses just because you turn the set off, unplug it, throw it in the closet, throw it out the windows, send it to the garbage dump, because they are going to get residual effect from their peers who are exposed to this."

So I'm not one who is terribly optimistic right now, though I do see some turnaround. I see pockets of it — pockets of family entertainment that the audience has proven that if it is well written they will accept. But, I don't think that there is enough of that to supercede what is chipping away at the culture and chips away at Christian-related moral fiber.

Burke: One of the things that you have said, Steve, is really true is in the area of movies. Even if you never saw the movie E.T. for example, everybody knows the phrase, "phone home." It has become a part of our culture. Certain terminology just automatically becomes filtered to everybody; I don't care who you are. E.T. played long before some of my children were born and they still know that term, "phone home." Because it is now part of who we are.

I think music is influential as well, because you are listening to music almost more than you watch TV. Every time you have a radio on in the car.

David Burke, associate professor of communication arts

Munson: In terms of sheer amount of time I bet popular music beats TV because it is so ubiquitous. On the other hand it is usually in the background and does not invite the same kind of undivided attention as the TV does.

Mulder: I agree to what Steve is talking about but what do we do as Christians that shows that we really believe in the redemptive process. What do we do that turns things around? I have friends who say, "Christians can not be distinctive in the media arts ever because if they go out to Hollywood and they try to be a part of the system they will be eaten up by it — which often happens. Most of our art forms that are contemporary are imitating things that are already there when by rights we should be the most creative people on earth.

So this is a problem because popular art, by its very definition, means that the public consumes it and we are not necessarily catering to popular culture so much as to what is relevant. So how do we redeem an art form; how do we turn it around? There are very few examples of that going on. But one thing that I notice that is happening in a lot of the mega churches, where I go to speak quite frequently, is they are are finally coming around to the understanding that visual is where it is at for our younger people today, although it seems like a no-brainer. People in that 15-25 year age range are used to very dynamic switches in visual material and they absorb a huge amount of it. Within a week of cyber information you can get more information than any medieval scholar had access to in his lifetime.

My point would be: OK, churches are realizing that the visual contents are important. Now, are we just going to let that wash over us and go back to old forms because they are safe, or are we going to try to learn creatively how to do something new with the visual genre, which includes media but does not have to be limited to media. For example, PowerPoint right now is very hot in the churches.

Burke: Protestant Christianity has been lax in supporting the arts. I think that we have a responsibility within a Christian university to support the arts as much as we possibly can. To bring artists to our campus, and to give the ones that are there a lot of freedom of exploration. To try to get people within our general college population to where they are viewing art, where they are participating. We have a mandate to train up a generation of Christian young people to do that.

I am a member of Christian theatre arts groups. I go to a lot of conferences where there are a lot of Christian college theatre professors there and you hear it over and over again: that there is sort of step child mentality toward the arts, not just toward the theatre but toward all the arts. Music might be an exception because it has been so accepted in the church for so long. But there is that sort of feeling that we have to have the arts or theatre because it fulfills some kind of function within education but we don't really want it to rear its ugly head. We have got to be willing, as Christians, to allow art and theatre to rear its ugly head — to accept it and see that it is valid and significant. We need it desperately. We need to reclaim it. It was always a part of the church for centuries until we got to the modern era.

Mulder: Now, you are mixing up something, because if you talk about beauty and you talk about letting artists today explore, you are going to get two very different trajectories going on. What I think we need to do at the student level is to help our students learn how to see. Learn how to see, learn how to hear. You were doing a musicological exegesis of how to listen to a song, which is what we do when we teach music. But I don't think that kids are aware of ninety percent of what happens in a good work of art. The problem is you see so much mediocre art. There is no discerning.

Burke: Even seniors in college are often like two-year-olds in understanding art.

Mulder: So, what are the tools in learning how to critique something that you see? It’s a challenge if you don't see excellent art. For example, Art 210 might be the only time many students will experience art if they don't look and see what is here on campus. If they are not engaged with that, it might be the only time that they are exposed to professional or semi-professional art in their lives. And if doesn't hook them then — if they are not somehow engaged then by the power of it — then they go on the rest of their lives never learning what it is about art that keeps it hanging around. You know, by all rights media should have replaced the fine arts by now. Much easier, much cheaper, much less a hassle. We don't deal with the personalities.

Karen Mulder, assistant professor of art

Burke: Take theatre, for example. It is at its zenith right now in the history of the world. More theatre is being produced right now than ever before. Even with the onslaught of television and film it has not replaced the theatre.

Mulder: Because nothing is like a real theatre production. Nothing is like owning a real original work of art, once you love it. It relates to the sense of personal satisfaction or pleasure. You Look at something and you keep getting something back from it. For example, capturing an emotion that we might not have access to in our real lives. Of course, in music being moved and learning to be moved. That's the stage that we have to offer.

Beverly: I think Karen's point a moment ago was a real nail hitter. They have been exposed to so much mediocrity that, in some instances, critics have defined as quality. There isn't a barometer that a lot of them can have to say this is quality.

You look at what critics have defined as quality in television over the last ten years. I am very much a minority. I don't happen to agree that "Seinfield" rates on the same level as those who were writing back in the 1950's when we put "I Love Lucy" on the air, when nobody had ever done three-camera situation comedy in that fashion in front of a live audience. To do 179-80 episodes of that show in a fashion that the audience will stick with it year after year. I don't think that we have necessarily raised the level of quality with the the 90's comedies.

My concern in my area is the effect on young people. I am in full agreement that parents have a major responsibility because they have been too passive to even learn what is on network television. After their kids have been watching a show a year or two they finally turn on the set and take a look and find out what their minds are being fed. First of all you have got to listen to our young people at the college age and the high school age and ask them questions. Why is it that this appeals to you? Why is it that this has become such a cultural thing for you? And the one that I've used as a cornerstone during the 90's is "Friends," which is a very disturbing show to me because of the absolute absence of morals. Not just an absence of sexual mores but the characters on that show lie as if it is a drink of water in every episode and yet that has become —even in Christian universities across the country — a defining program for the generation of college students that we are raising today. After it had been on a year, I asked one of my students, "What is it about that show that makes it compelling TV for you to sit down and watch it?" The answer they gave me was, "Because we know so many people who are like that."

Mulder: They are the most self-indulgent people in the world. So is Seinfield.

Beverly: Exactly. We were on a trip. We had been riding about five hours and this subject came up. These are all Christian young people. Some of them came from minister's homes. They loved "Friends." Appointment TV on Thursday nights. And I said, "Now, let me ask you this. Where is the consistency with your witness?" I said, "Some of you who are riding this van with me are going out on a weekends for your ministry teams, your mission trips. You are taking a message of Jesus Christ and the love of God and the morals of God to young people. You do it to younger children in backyard Bible clubs. Where is your consistency of your witness: you are saying to these young people, in one instance, there is nothing any higher than the love of God, and then you turn right around and you embrace every Thursday night thirty minutes of television that is the absence of God."

They didn't like being confronted with that because you are forced at looking at yourselves in a light that you don't like. I came back to them and I said, "OK, you think it is just your generation? Go back to 1970, when the movie "Love Story" came out. At that point and time it probably used more explicit language — particularly with younger characters — than had ever been dealt with on screen. Second, you had two characters who obviously and openly admitted that they had no allegiance to Jesus Christ. In fact, they were open atheists. They said they wouldn't be hypocrites. They used explicit language. There was more than a veiled hint that they had engaged in pre-marital relations. And the whole generation of high school and college students, including Christian young people, embraced that because it was a tear jerker. We were all sad because the girl died with leukemia. And we totally avoided the values that were there!

Finally, a youth director and a choir director confronted us one day and said, "Where is the consistency with your witness that you are going to embrace this as a cornerstone of the entertainment that you think reflects quality and that you are going to feed yourself with. Where is the consistency?"

I think that the problem is it becomes a defining tone to a lot of young people's morals eventually, even by residual effect. I think that it is like anything we do in life. If we keep that as part of us and if we keep subscribing to it, ultimately there is going to be some form of absorption.

Paul Munson, assistant professor of music

Burke: Part of what we have done as a culture is we have created fragmented people, where we just sort of compartmentalize our lives. I am able to separate my leisure time, for example, from my spiritual time. And so, in my spiritual time, I do the things that are spiritual. In my leisure time, I do the things that are leisurely and somehow it is O.K. for me to make that clear separation. "Well, you shouldn't expect that I’m spiritual during my leisure time. That is my time!"

We have lost the concept of holiness in Christianity to a degree that God redeems a whole man and that He owns you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and that everything that you do affects your relationship with Him and He is in everything that you do once you become a Christian and you can't separate this. You can't isolate this over here and separate that over there. It is all Christian.

Munson: I see the same inconsistency in my students and I tell them what a person does in their leisure time has as much to do with what kind of man or woman they are as what they do during the work time. It is as much an issue of stewardship.

And what I see my students doing during their leisure time saps them. It is not something that is recreation in a sense that it recreates it — it poisons them! They go back to their work more tired, more empty rather than more vibrant, ready to do their work. I think ultimately the reason that high culture is in the shape that it is — why the plays are produced that are produced — is the same reason that popular culture is in trouble. These are reflections of culture that is morally, aesthetically, epistemologically bankrupt.

The proper response to that kind of frankly pessimistic outlook is: well, let's roll up our sleeves. That is part of the cultural mandate. To go out and model a culture that is transcendent. To model a culture that will build up rather than numb. The way to do that is through the church. Because we can't expect the world out there to be just like the church. We are not sanctifying society. We are just doing our best to make it a little healthier, and the church has been asleep at the wheel in the way it has just bought the world's forms. Bought the world's approach, hook, line, and sinker, rather than developing forms that will effectively communicate its message.

Burke: Even in the area of creativity, we automatically in the church assume that we are not going to be as creative as Hollywood or as inventive or as insightful. We just bought into that instead of realizing and trusting God. That is the bottom line. How can I learn to trust God if God is the ultimate creator? If He is the Father of all of it, how can I trust Him to be creative in me, through me, and use me?

Beverly: I think another problem that we have — and this is within the church as well as anywhere else is in today's culture and society — is the demand for instant success and instant gratification. If it doesn't reach a pinnacle within a very short time then it is a failure. It is not just youth; adults are this way as well as youth. If it doesn't happen instantly, we tend to give up. Some of the greatest successes that ever occurred creatively in our world, most of it has happened, if it has been a lasting success, with slow, deliberate and patient work and activity leading to that. Unfortunately, we have a lot of folks in our society today and some of it is right within the church, that if it doesn't happen this week, or this month, or this year, it is going to fail.

Burke: Our concept of success is wrong, too. I hear this question a lot when people come through Union on tours. They ask, "How many kids do you have up there on Broadway?" So, their concept of success as a Christian theatre person is Hollywood or Broadway or something like that. There is a character named Bezaleel in the Old Testament and God taught me about Bezaleel, because Bezaleel ultimately is anointed with the Holy Spirit and called to design and build the tabernacle in the wilderness. I was thinking, what was Bezaleel doing before Moses called the children of Israel out of Egypt? We know the Israelites were making bricks and building pyramids. I think Bezaleel was probably an artist. He wasn’t out there stomping bricks. He was designing pyramids. He was maybe doing the intricate art work of the pyramids. I am just surmising but I think that might be a very good surmise. The point with that is it’s like the pyramids represent in some way the ultimate creative ability of mankind, like Broadway, like Hollywood.

It may be that there are some people that need to get out there and build those pyramids and that is great. But God's ultimate calling is not to build pyramids that speak of the greatness of humanity. It is to build tents, tabernacles in the wilderness that house the presence of God. I think that is the ultimate calling of the Christian artist. God is calling us as Christians who are also artists to build tents — to be tentmakers, to be tabernacle builders in the wilderness so that we can create something that houses the very presence of God. If you create something that houses the presence of God and someone comes to see it, it's is going to change their life, it is going to affect their life in a mighty way. We need to find a way to bring God back into our art.

Steve Beverly, assistant professor of communication arts

Mulder: Presence is a powerful thing and it's exactly what is missing in media in a way. It is hard to convey presence through media because it is such a cold form of communication. So, in a way the direct arts, the ones where you the actor spits on you — hopefully not! — or you get the clay in your hands. Lee Benson (Union sculpture professor) talks to his students how when you have the wheel running and you scoop out the hole in the pot, that is the God-shaped space, and God breathes into that. It has to be an opening for the Spirit to go in. You know, he is doing parables everyday with the way he teaches mud. They call it the mud.

Burke: That is what we are too. We are the mud.

Duduit: For most of western history, "beauty" was an artistic ideal — the idea was that we wanted to try to achieve the beautiful through art. It seems that with the prevailing world view that dominates the arts today, that is no longer the ideal or goal. Or the postmodern mind asks who can determine the beautiful — a relativistic approach that says what is beautiful for you might not be beautiful for me.

Munson: I think that is a great symptom of our social sickness — that we see beauty as being relative in the same way that we see truth and goodness being relative. I think if you go back historically, Christians have understood beauty to be something objective. It is the order of things that are good and true that allow us to perceive that goodness and truth. God made everything perfectly beautiful.

Mulder: But He also had a sense of humor. I don’t know if I would call a chimpanzee beautiful!

Munson: Depends upon what you mean by beauty. If beauty means lovely, and graceful and that is it, then of course not. But, if beauty means merely that which communicates good and truth, what is good and what is true, then something that is beautiful can actually be pretty ugly.

Burke: Like the crucifixion.

Munson: Like the crucifixion. So we have to be very careful not to adopt the world's understanding of what beauty is. I think that ultimately we moderns and post-moderns are scared stiff of beauty. We are afraid of it because of how it threatens to remind us of what is greater than ourselves. We are in rebellion against that. Historically, Christians have seen beauty as important because of how it alerts us to the transcendent.

Mulder: The western world believes very much in originality. So art became — in the last twenty years especially — needing to be original, needing to have a concept which we can barely understand half of the time unless we use words. So the aesthetic of the beautiful is still in existence but the art world hasn't endorsed it. But it can come back because it has in the past. The renaissance artist responded to the medieval ages with neo-classicism — a new form of classical beauty. They also came back after a period of a much wilder kind of expressive work. That is what I am banking on. We go around and around in circles. We will go to the opposite side after a while. But I don't know if that is in the next seventy years or the next seven.

Burke: So we are obviously living in the age of relativism that forces us to not have rules. To do everything by non-rules.

Mulder: The relativism is more that truth is relative, therefore my truth is as valid as your truth. Therefore my conceptual thing is as valid as your beautiful approach to art. The truth can still be. God can convey truth through Balaam’s ass. I mean, God can convey truth through anything He chooses to but the question is what is the vehicle. Are we looking for it in different vehicles, too? People who are great Hollywood producers can be used the way Balaam’s ass was used.

Burke: To not even necessarily know that they are creating imaginary that is pleasing to God.

Mulder: There seems to be fear of making great statements anymore. People make very small statements. They will embrace a small segment, a small editorial because that is where we have gotten to. We have worked ourselves into a corner. I think a lot of the media work going on is good at making small statements. So, when you get a movie that gives you an opening, a movie that just opens you up to this transcendent or the redemptive . . .

Burke: a movie like The Green Mile that is out right now. It is a real spiritual film.

Mulder: People respond to it but they don't necessarily know why anymore.

Beverly: I think too, we've had debate both in the Christian world and in the television world. The program "Touched By An Angel" by all rights never should have succeeded on network television. In fact, CBS tried to kill it. Now, I have to be honest with you. I am happy we have it there because it is a small statement. I had rather have it than not. But I also find disturbing that you are providing an image to the world that in that show takes great pains not to use the word Christianity in any fashion. That the works that transform people’s lives and that the actions that cause our lives to be transformed are strictly the work of angels as opposed to having a deeply personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Burke : There are two approaches to communicating a message: that is the direct approach and the indirect approach. The direct approach is expository preaching, teaching, those kinds of things. There is also an indirect approach. There has to be a balance between those. Art tends to use as its way of voicing an indirect approach. It is part of the definition of art. There has to be an indirect statement and a built-in ambiguity that people can't quite get it, and we are able to read other kinds of messages into it as we try to as we try to interpret and look at it from other angles. That is just part of it. I think that we need to realize that and begin to use it. What happens often times in Christianity when we want to use art in our church or something is we make sure that the statement is very direct, so that it becomes propaganda, it becomes a tract, instead of a great work of art. That is why so much of it is just mediocre.

Beverly: I think one of the problems again is the problem of volume in the culture that occurs in the medium of television. We don't just have three networks now. We now have 200 networks counting cable. There isn't enough creative talent that is going to develop quality and excellence to fill all of those half hours that have to be filled on 24 hour networks. We are not going to see anything more than small pockets. Just simply because it is a medium that demands volume. It chews up creativity faster than any media in history.

And it is a medium that demands instant success. It is the only media that we talk about here amongst the areas that most of us primarily represent where success is defined as knocking off your competitor. You go to the theatre on Broadway. If one play is successful, typically it is going to bring an audience to go see other plays. In art, the same thing happens for the most part. You don't have a creation with the idea in mind that mine is better than yours. It is an individual statement. In music again, if you have one set or a genre of music that becomes successful it tends to breed interest in that. In television you've got to knock somebody off in their time period in three weeks or else you’re a failure at that point.

There are so many constraints and constrictions on the part of television that I don't think you are ever going to see more than just very small pockets of what we see as excellence. When you find these elements a lot of times it may not even be by intent of the person who is the creator. I think that is what makes television so very confining. If you are looking for it to be a twenty-four hour a day or even a five hour a day point of excellence. It is not going to happen. It will just will not happen.

It is a medium in which, within the culture, everything else is going to become new again. Everything old is going to become new again. Look at "Who Wants To Become A Millionaire." It is nothing more than what we had in the 1950’s. It is just repackaged with higher technology, brighter lights, a music track all the way through it. Creating live drama and suspense, in a theatre-like setting with an audience. It is the same thing that happened in the 1950’s. But, the truth is, a lot of people thought in the last ten years that is dead. It would never happen again, particularly prime time television. It would never draw the audience again. So, it finds the audience again. Number one in television in the ratings.

You can use that as a microcosm of what happens in so many other art forms. If it is old, if it was successful, if somebody comes up with a way of repackaging it and the timing is right. I think with audience you have to have enough time to pass within generations to where a lot of the audience doesn’t know. They don’t because they weren’t there when this happened.

Mulder : Getting back to the idea of a Christian response: unless we as Christians can provide better alternatives in some way, then we are going to lose the culture war every time, except for individuals here and there. Now there are other things too that are real interesting such as the fact that perhaps there is a link between very young children who are exposed to more than five hours of T.V. a day not developing nerve synapses and therefore becoming ADD or ADHD. Now nobody is willing to do a big study and exposition that but a long time ago it was discovered that there were technological effects because when you watch TV, you are in a state of alpha waves, which is what Zen Buddhists are, people in trances. So, you are not thinking actively and therefore you don’t develop your brain actively if the television is used as the babysitter. That is a message I wish would get out. But, it doesn’t. I don’t see it anywhere.

Whether you are a young parent with young kids or whether you are teaching 190 people, how do you turn that around? How do you make people aware? It is really a matter of seeing. I like what Margaret Miles says in Image is Insight, that in the past medievals believed that sight took something and a fire ring came back into your brain and burned an image into your brain and that is why you shouldn’t look at evil things — because it will stay in there and dim the lamp of your soul. Now she says though that we get over loaded with so much visual information and of course we know that is not how we see anymore. We have to censor what we see and I think you know being willing to censor yourself or your children is a courageous act.

Burke: The Bible says that we should garrison or guard our minds. To set up a boundary. Whenever thoughts come in they come across the boundary — you’ve got to go through everything, you can keep this, but you can’t keep that.

Mulder: It is a question of balance too. You have to garrison your mind but you also have to be free enough to learn the stuff you have to learn. So, how do we balance?

Munson: It seems practically speaking we need to encourage our young people to go out and play redemptive roles in culture, redeeming roles in culture. We need to have a church that is courageous enough to worship in a counter-cultural way. We as parents need to teach our children to discern. That is a daunting task. In my family — and this is going to make me sound horribly backwards — we watch hardly any television. I don’t know even how to begin talking to you about these programs because I have no idea what they are. It is just because I think we have better things to do with our time. Now, that is not to say that we pretend like television doesn’t exist. We talk a lot about it. I talk a lot about it to my four year old — even though she hardly watches any of it — so that she can be aware of why we don’t watch it. We don’t go to R\-rated movies. I just can’t deal with that kind of spiritual poison in my life. Again, we don’t pretend like they’re not out there; we talk about how to deal with it and why we don’t.

Beverly: When you are a parent in today’s culture you have to have the courage to be unpopular. In so many homes — even in Christian families where the children or the teen-agers are in a high school or middle school culture where they begin to get again as Medved talks about the residual effect from their peers — the easy thing to do is to give in to that and let them have unbridled opportunities. At some point you’ve got to have the courage to be unpopular within your home and say, "We are not going to R rated movies." My wife has a friend that made the comment to her one day — and this is a lady who is very active within the church — she said, "I never allow my daughter who is 14 to watch an R rated movie that I haven’t seen myself." Now, if that is your barometer, I think we are really in trouble.

Burke: The point is, I think that you have to be careful. You know the rating system in films is the world’s rating system. I don’t know if we should allow the world’s rating system to become our rating system. Because there are a lot of G rated films that you probably don’t want the kids to watch either.

Mulder: I would like to see V value for vacuity.

Munson: That is an excellent point.

Burke: I think the Roman Catholics put out a rating system on the internet that you can go to where they list out exactly what is in the movie.

Mulder: Ted Baehr puts out the movie ratings also. But let’s talk about again our contingency for the students. If we want to also have good ministers, creative people who bring arts into the church that is one side of it. The other side of it is, of course, who goes out into the culture. So somebody who has the heart for it and has the will for it also needs to be keeping an eye on the culture as it is if we are going to speak into it. That is always my contention. All the artists can’t be sequestered in a church. Some of them are made to be speaking to the culture.

You have to decide whether you are going to create art that is going into the culture. I am also talking about being on the creative side. How are we going to make people who can move into that system as creative talent unless they know something about it? In the 1980's there was a program called "The Equalizer." Most people don't know that the vice executive producer was a Christian on that. Coleman Luck is his name. He was put into a tremendous position of being able to write the story and then to bring it to TV. Edward Woodward was this former CIA operative who puts ads out and just does good things for people in trouble. Now there was an episode where he had this former Cuban secret policeman in jail talking with Edward Woodward. The Cuban guy becomes a Christian in prison and he asks Woodward, "What about you? What do you believe?" And Coleman, trying to be shrewd, writes in, "Well, I'm not sure," or give some kind of answer that leaves it open. Well, when his producers read the script they said, "I think you should have them say, ‘Yes,’ he believes, because look at all of the options you have if you do that. You never saw someone go back and do a rewrite so quickly without any response! But, the reason he was able to do that is because he was in that position.

Coleman was very influential in forming Premise, a Christian fellowship that meets out in Hollywood and has covert meetings because some people would lose their jobs if it were known that they were Christians. The group prays for each other. It is literally a relational network and it has to be done undercover and it is very quiet. They don’t have a web site I don’t think and they don’t send out a newsletter and I don’t think that they even collect dues. But, they meet. If we don’t keep getting progressively more Christians at every level of operations in any of the arts, then we really won’t have a voice.

Burke: We have to learn. That is what we have to train our Christian young people at Christian universities to learn how to infiltrate the culture but not lose their faith along the way.

Munson: They need our support.

Burke: I think that we have to go back and realize that God is still God. He actually is in control of it all. He’s sovereign. He is in control of pop culture whether pop culture realizes it or not. He is ultimately in control of everything that takes place. We can get a lot of encouragement in that. We know Him personally.