the july-september 2006 journal crucible has a focus on the church and popular culture. there is an interview with tom beaudoin and one of the questions asks him to reflect back on his book virtual faith. i love his reply…

i still think the basic claim of the book is right… people can and do use popular media culture as a way of working on their own spirituality to constitute meaningful symbols for themselves and their communities…the fact that popular media culture is an imaginative palette for faith – not to mention how we interpret what that means – suggests that theologians have their work cut out for them… the church has to take that imaginative palette seriously… if part of the pastoral task of the church is to communicate god’s mercy and god’s freedom in a way that people understand then you have to use the language that they’re using, you have to use the metaphors and forms of experience that are already familiar to them. you can’t ask people to believe in something their own experience forbids them to believe; that’s just elitist ministry. we still have that going on in some places, where it’s believed people need to be converted from one cultural system to the church’s cultural system. i believe there’s a lot of value in the church’s cultural system and i would defend it a great deal. but all the aspects of the church’s cultural system itself – its candles, its mass, its worship, its songs – were at one time secular cultural systems. everything the church uses was stolen from somewhere else and turned in an ecclesial direction for the sake of the gospel. so i am not asking the church to do something the church hasn’t already done!