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Mediating the Mediator: A Cultural Theology of CulturePETE WARDIn Consuming Religion Vincent Miller argues that a consumer culture represents a significant challenge for the Christian faith.1 Consumer culture, he says, commodifies religious symbols and practices. This is corrosive because commodification unhooks practices and symbols from historic traditions and communities of faith (13). As a committed Catholic, Miller is concerned that religious cultures and communities should attempt to resist the negative effects of consumerism. Yet he is also highly critical of theological engagement with consumer culture. Theologians, he says, prefer to discuss consumerism in relation to the history of ideas and anthropology. For Miller this is a mistake. “Whatever the origins of consumer desire in modern metaphysics and anthropology, it is currently sustained not primarily by an incorrigible commitment to pernicious ideas but by a host of economic, social and cultural structures and practices” (115). Consumer culture, he argues, is not really a culture at all. It is not wedded to any particular worldview or ethos. Rather it is a “set of interpretative habits and dispositions supported by a variety of practices and infrastructures for engaging elements of any culture” (194). The habitual response of theologians to consumerism is to attempt to wrestle the issue onto familiar philosophical grounds. Thus they seek to engage consumerism through questions of cultural content and ontology (4). These strategies miss the mark, says Miller, because they fail to recognise the nature of consumerism and the way it operates both in the church and in the wider society. This does not mean that such concerns are irrelevant, simply that they require methods and ways of seeing that engage more directly with the nature of contemporary culture and society. “There are certainly connections to be made between one’s theology of creation or understanding of the incarnation and the practice of daily life, but such correlations are seldom direct applications” (13). A cultural theology of culture must be particular. This means that it must be situated in the historical and the social. Miller’s pessimism concerning the impact of consumerism on contemporary religion is a starting point for such a cultural theology. This essay is a dialogue with the two points raised by Miller: firstly, his largely pessimistic evaluation of the impact of consumer culture on the church, its symbols and practices; secondly, his sense that theologians need to develop new methods of analysis and understanding of the way that contemporary consumer culture operates. A cultural theology therefore must not only focus on particular communicative and social practices in contemporary culture, it also needs to utilise ways of reading and understanding culture. At the same time I believe that theology should be about God. A cultural theology therefore sets out to explore the mediation of God in culture. Such an enterprise sits within a tradition or canon of theological debate and creativity. A cultural theology therefore does not rest with the interpretation of the cultural as mediation, but it sets this within a wider Christian discourse. Engagement with the tradition functions primarily as a creative resource for this cultural theology. Insights from previous periods and cultural situations are used to develop a persuasive, situated, and committed account of the mediation of God in culture. Theology as SociologyThis treatment of the theological and mediation echoes John Milbank’s call for a theology as sociology. The general perception of the argument in Theology and Social Theory2 is that theologians need no longer engage with social science or cultural analysis.3 I believe this is to misread the direction of his thinking. Milbank’s starting point is that theology either positions or is positioned by secular discourses (1). The timidity of theology has meant that it has frequently borrowed a “fundamental account of society and history” and then sought theological insights that “cohere with it” (380). This enterprise is mistaken, argues Milbank, because no such account, which is “neutral, rational and universal,” exists (380). In these circumstances, he says, theology must itself act as an account of the social. This involves a fundamental shift in what it means to think theologically. So he argues that “the claim here is not that theology, conceived in broadly traditional fashion, can now add to its competence certain new, ‘social’ pronouncements. On the contrary the claim is that all theology has to re-conceive itself as a kind of ‘Christian Sociology’: that is to say as the explication of a socio-linguistic practice, or as the re-narration of this practice as it has historically developed” (381). Milbank’s notion of theology as sociology is highly suggestive. He envisions the expansion of tools of analysis and ways of seeing traditionally linked to theology. Where his perspective is problematic however is the way that “Theology” appears to be disembodied and reified. A cultural theology would not accept the continuation of such assumptions because “Theology” in the way it is used here by Milbank simply doesn’t exist. What does exist are theologians, academics, church officials, and preachers who make use of ideas and texts and conventions for their own ends. A cultural theology therefore must be situated and particular. A similar problem with Milbank arises from his location of theology as the dominant discourse. In place of a rather triumphalist air I would locate theological discourse within communities and identities. Here identity and ideas about God are linked by the social. A cultural theology is engaged in by people for certain ends and purposes. It is this commitment that situates social theory in relation to the traditions, canon, and interpretative conventions and practices of Christians and the churches. It is within this community, and to further these aims and purposes, that the social and the theological are to be negotiated. Mediation and a Cultural Theology of CultureCultural theology accepts that the transcendent is mediated within culture. In his treatment of popular music, Keith Negus says that mediation operates in three ways: first, mediation as intermediary action; second, mediation as transmission; and third, mediation as evident in social relationships.4 Mediation as intermediary action relates to the activities of individuals and organisations such as record companies, music producers, publicists, and festival organisers. Corresponding to the idea of “production” within the cultural circuit, the action of intermediaries can be read as “producing,” but at the same time by engaging in the process of production as affecting what is mediated. Mediation as transmission refers to the role of media in distributing and making available popular music. The internet, the radio, and the compact disk are a means of transmission. In transmission it is recognised that something “passes between” or bridges a gap between parties. Transmission enables, but it also limits the range of expression. Thus there are conventions and limitations to television formats and the popular concert. Finally mediation, says Negus, is situated within social relationships. The consumption and the cultures that characterise the agency of fans mediate popular music and situate it in the social in ways. The activity of groups of people in relation to popular music rearticulates songs with other arenas of meaning-making and significance. Negus takes his account of mediation from Raymond Williams’s Keywords.5 In his account of the usage of mediation Williams draws on early English uses of the term in Chaucer where the mediation of an intermediary refers to a reconciling action between two adversaries. Mediation, says Williams, also carries the sense of the means of transmission or agency. The notion of an intermediary is “repeatedly used of the intercession of Christ between God and man” (171). In addition, through German idealist philosophy, says Williams, mediation also came to carry notions of reconciliation between God and humanity (171). From this it is possible to begin to see a connection between ideas of mediation and the specifically theological. Following Williams’s lead it is possible to see how the idea of mediation holds the potential for a dialogue between contemporary understandings of popular culture and rich theological themes. In particular, in the concept of mediation lies not only a Christology, and along with it an implicit doctrine of the Trinity, but also notions of soteriology. When these themes are articulated with the complex reading of mediation offered by Negus a theological/cultural perspective emerges. This synoptic view offers the possibility of a cultural theology of culture. This cultural theology of culture is developed first through particular accounts of mediation. To “embody” and situate this treatment of culture I have chosen six short case studies where the practices and symbols of the Christian Church are commodified in a consumer culture. I want by this means to extend the discussion with Miller through particular accounts of mediation. Following the case studies I develop a threefold cultural theology. The first section deals with discourse and the Trinity, the second section is soteriological, and the third ecclesiological. |
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