Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / The Battle for the Imagination - Ted Turnau || SLP467

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The Battle for the Imagination - Ted Turnau || SLP467 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: I was talking to someone the other day who listened to the Speak Life podcast, and they said that my intros are so consistent that they basically know what I'm gonna say off by heart.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: So sorry about about the the monotony, and I thought I'd try and introduce this episode a little bit differently.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome back to the Speak Life Podcast, episode 467.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Thomas Thurrogate, media producer at Speak Life, and today we have a conversation that Glenn Scrivener and Nate Morgan Locke recorded with Ted Turnow about his new book, Oasis of Imagination, Engaging Our World with a Better Creativity.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: I was really excited about this conversation actually because I read Ted Turnow's book a few years ago now, Popologetics, perhaps is his most well-known book, or certainly how I first encountered him.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that was quite formative for me in thinking about engaging popular culture from a Christian perspective.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: So it was wonderful to have Ted Turnow on the show.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Enjoy this conversation.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: And who am I with?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: You're with Nate Morganlock, Glenn.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: Nice.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I'm here, and we have a guest.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: We have a guest all the way from Prague, uh, Ted Turnow.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: Can you introduce yourselves to us?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um introduce myself.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: What did I say?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: Self.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, all of them.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: All self- all of me?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: You are legion.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I am my name's Ted.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: I am not suffering from multiple personality disorder.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um I am currently chair of journalism and liter uh journalism and media studies at Anglo-American University, but I'll be switching in September to uh literature and culture.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we're playing musical chairs at my university.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And um I am heavily invested in helping Christians engage culture.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be a resource to them.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've written some books and uh do my thing in Prague, Czech Republic, where I teach classes in religious studies and uh cultural studies and media studies and social theory, um, all the cool classes.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Those that's me.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: All the cool classes from Ted.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: And uh you've just come out with two books, which is a little bit greedy, but uh one of them is uh Oasis of Imagination, which is uh a longer work.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then uh we've got the punchier, um uh briefer version, I guess.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_04: Uh well it is punchier because it's got a fist on the front cover.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_04: It does.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_04: That's right.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: A fist with a paintbrush.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: A paintbrush.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: And uh this is called Imagination Manifesto.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: And the first question I want to ask Ted is uh usually when you publish a manifesto, it's because things are broken, you're on the brink of a revolution, everything's falling apart.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh is that your vision of the church or the world at the moment?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: My vision of the church in the Western world is that we are in a pretty solidly post-Christian culture where once upon a time most people considered themselves Christian, whatever that meant, of varying degrees, but we have since moved on.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, uh the church finds itself in an increasingly marginalized position uh culturally, in terms of demographics, in terms of numbers, and uh it seems to me that there is a lot of there are many Christians freaking out about this and not handling it particularly well.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: In America, this comes out in terms of Christian nationalism and trying to uh uh enforce a cultural conformity that those who uh that most of the country feels very uncomfortable with.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: In Britain, um, to the extent you can generalize about it, it seems like there are a lot of people kind of drawing back into safe spaces and trying to live a sheltered, quiet existence where they don't have to deal with the craziness outside their own bubble.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And neither of these I think is is really helpful or healthy for the church, and it's certainly not helpful or healthy for the culture around us.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: So um so the manifesto tries to find a third way uh besides shouting and trying to beat people into conformity or running for the hills and you know, Katie bar the door, circle the wagons, sort of thing.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and this time through imagination and engaging in the cultural conversation in a way that is positive and productive and interesting and beautiful and uh subversive, all that sort of stuff.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's something that the church really hasn't cottoned on to yet.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm trying to cotton them.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, okay.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_04: So not culture, not Christian bobble, but oases of imagination.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_04: Um What is an oasis, Ted?
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: An oasis, as I use it in the book, is a gigantic metaphor, a recurring metaphor for Christian works that aren't aimed particularly at Christians, but are rather aimed at engaging both Christian and non-Christian imaginations into a place.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: The thing about oases is they're not bubbles, they're breathable, right?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: You walk into an um uh an oasis and there you find shade and refreshment and all sorts of interesting plants and stuff, and um and it's there that I want people to I I want people to be creating works that sort of shake them up a little bit uh as well as delight them at the same time.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, and I wrote this story, this parable about you know trying to figure out something that's at the bottom of the pool, but I'm not gonna spoil, no spoilers.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um at my at my house we have two mottos, one for the family, uh which is uh which is uh the turno motto is uh salvation is by grace alone, but dessert you gotta earn.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the second is no spoilers ever.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: So um so anyway, if you wanna if you want to check out the introduction, I have Ted Turno.com just went live like a few days ago.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: So you so you can read a sample there.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: I h I hope that's okay with IVP.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um we teasers are okay, aren't they?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: Teasers, not spoilers, is what we're saying.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Teaser trailer.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, so I so I I want the church to start becoming invested in supporting those people who can do this sort of work well.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And there's not a ton of them around because uh because of the quirks of the market or the demands of the market, you make money as a Christian artist by giving Christian audiences what they want, which is if you're a musician, you give them you give them rock and roll sort of like the world does, but safe for the youth group.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that I think is a disastrous sort of uh it just kind of stifles creativity.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you you you make movies that are just either propaganda or pablum.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: You make television shows that are nice and soothing but anodyne.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: I I mean it's just it's there's I think we can be doing so much better.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And there are people out there doing so much better, which is why in the big book I spend four or five chapters talking about here are some people who are doing great things.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: One of which yeah, I'd love to hear more about that.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: So who should we be aiming to be like, or who who is sort of blazing a trail in this area?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, well, I mentioned Kishlovsky.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: We Nate and I talked about our mutual love of Kishlovsky, which is really interesting because Kishlovsky didn't call himself a Christian.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is one of those rare instances where non-Christians can actually capture Christian imaginative vision better than a lot of Christian filmmakers can.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um I talk about Tolkien, of course.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um I talk about uh my co-author in Imagination, uh in Imagination Manifesto, Ruth Naomi Floyd, who is a fabulous jazz vocalist as well as an art photographer.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And um I talk about the uh the rapper show Baraka, um, who I don't know if if he's made that much of a splash in the UK.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um one chapter I didn't get to write.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: I I had written, but um the licensing fee for the for the lyrics was too much.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: But David Eugene Edwards of Woven Hand, I consider to be a uh a real um there there are just so many ways to do it well.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um oh, blind Willie Johnson, uh the old blues guitarist um from the 1930s.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Who else did I talk about?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: And what are they actually doing?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like you you say they they do it well.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: What it what is it that they do?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um so a big chunk of both books is describing what makes a Christian imagination distinctive and what makes uh what makes for a kind of Christian imagination that can resonate well with non-Christian imaginations, can that can build oases well.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: And there are two things that have to happen, in my opinion.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: One is you have to maintain attention, what I call brightness control, attention between the darkness and the light.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: That is a Christian imagination understands the brokenness of the world, what I call a cross-shaped imagination, and it understands the hope that can't be conquered by the darkness.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it holds on to both of those at the same time.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't it doesn't say, yeah, the world is full of unicorns and bunny rabbits and rainbows.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it doesn't like like there's nothing bad, and it doesn't kind of sink into despair either, and it's all dar you know, death and gloom and and darkness, but it says both at the same time.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that can be a really if you if you can do both of those at the same time, that's really, really arresting.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that can be done in any number of ways.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other thing is I think we have to maintain a balance between uh hitting people over the head with our message, shouting sort of propaganda uh, you know, Jesus' per minute on in your song and things like that.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: And or what I call shouting or mumbling, which is you are so very, very subtle in in your Christian witness that you basically sever uh you sever yourself from your Christian roots and you just kind of end up sounding exactly like what the world has to offer, you know, whether that's like, oh, but I have a real great social conscience.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I I think there has to be something there that's distinctively Christian.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And maintaining that balance is really tricky.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um and Christians are going to have all sorts of disagreements about how one does that best, but I think it needs to be done.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: It needs to be it needs to be a point of discussion because right now what we're doing is mostly uh blatantly out there Christian praise songs, praise, praise, praise.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a place for praise songs within the sanctuary of the church, but that's not what gets past them.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: So my my uh when I was university we used to talk about subliminal and then there were things that were just blimminal.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And Christian Christian art tends to be very bliminal.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: So so and when you can do that, when you can do both of those um well, then you get an effect wherein uh you can kind of plant a time bomb and watch it go off, the way Jesus does when he tells the parable of the workers in the vineyard.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and and you have the whole crowd saying, you know, those guys ought to die, and Jesus is like, Yeah, you know who I'm talking about?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about you.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, wait, what just happened?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, or or Mark 7, where Jesus just kind of, you know, the Pharisees are talking to Jesus' disciples and saying, You shouldn't be eating with unwashed hands, and Jesus says, Now you guys don't know where uncleanness comes from.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't come from outside, it comes from the inside.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then he just walks away, and everybody's going, What?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And but it made some people curious and they dug deeper and they learned.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: They um they they started catching a vision of what Jesus was talking about.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus was doing stuff like that all the time.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the best storytellers, the best songwriters, the best game devs.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's what I forgot.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm on a little bit of caffeine right now.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: What um the the one that I forgot to mention was that dragon cancer, which I know Glenn knows because you you interviewed them as I interviewed them.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Ryan and Emmy Green.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what I'm talking about.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you know anything about that dragon cancer, it got all sorts of accolames within the indie dev community.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: They went to, you know, they talked about all sorts of things.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they were not particularly evasive about their own faith, but the way they presented it was not was was as far as you could get from bludgeoning somebody else with the gospel or with, you know, you need to be like this because or God won't love you or or whatever.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was just kind of asking people to come step into their shoes, and it just broke people, like PewDiePie broke down sobbing when he streamed this game.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: PewDiePie.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you who don't know YouTube, PewDiePie's like the most famous idiot on there, and he does and he's not he's not known for his sensitivity.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um but it yeah, it's it's just and I think once once we do that, then they can begin seeing the gospel as beautiful.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_04: So just think about the like who's doing it well, and the challenge.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, like the book that I probably recommend to more people, which as a living author, is probably a book popologetics, in terms of you want to engage with pop culture, you want to help young people, particularly um think through what they are watching and what they're consuming from a Christian perspective.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_04: So we've clearly got that.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_04: And but it's pop culture, it's popular, it's reaching a mass audience.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_04: Obviously, this book or this pair in terms of Oasis of Imagination and Imagination Manifesto are much more about Christian creatives making their own cultural artifacts and and pieces of media.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_04: Um do you think there is a way for Christians to become popular within these so without selling out, you know, is yeah, to what extent are we just so mindful of of markets that people play it safe and then stay within, you know, contemporary Christian music or or evangelical filmmaking or whatever?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that's a great, great question.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: And um and it's there's a couple of things to say about that.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: First, um these these the contents of these two books were originally supposed to be in Popologetics.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was just gonna it was part two of Popologetics.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Here's how you deal with popular culture that's not Christian, here's how Christians ought to be making their own popular culture.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um but there was an editor when I was shopping the book around who said, Look, nobody's going to take a first-time editor and allow you to publish a 550-page book.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's not going to happen.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: And besides which, you actually have two books here.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: So why don't you just treat it as two books?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, oh man, he's right.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh, you know, 10, 12.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: I it turns out that doing a book on imagination is slow work.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: But so that's the that's the first thing.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing is um I actually deal with this question in uh in the bigger book, Oasis of Imagination.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's a guy who goes to our Czech church, who's another American like me, who used to front a band called Dismas.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: His name's Zach Ziegan, which is a rock and roll sounding name if ever there was one.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I interested a name, it's a sound effect.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: For like the old Batman cartoon, the old Batman show.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Zach.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_04: It's my brother Kapow.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and I interviewed him and asked him about his experience with the recording industry, and he told me he was very, very um, he was he wasn't critical of his label, um, but it was it was obvious to me that there were these subtle and sometimes not so subtle pressures on his band, which for lack of a better name was kind of Christian Screamo, to be kind of more radio friendly, something that more Christians would find comforting and encouraging and yada yada yada.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: And um and so I think the market pressures are are there and are hard to escape, which means we either we either need to find alternative ways of funding Christian culture um and and I talk about this as trying to get behind um what Makoto Fujimura, the the um the Christian artist calls the gift economy, borrowing from Lewis Hyde.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And we need to educate audiences to want something less nice and conformist.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like what I what I want what I want Christian culture to do is to go up to somebody, or I at least some pieces of Christian culture is to go up to somebody and just grab them by the lapels and give them a good shake.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Just so that they're going, go, and then and then well what was that?
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it can't be, you know, it can't be horrific, but something that grabs them and and and resonates with their imagination so that they feel like they've been hit by something that's amazing.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like something that that gives awe rather than awe.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: I wonder what the YouTube subtitles will do with that, but yeah.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: But so so um raising audience awareness of the vast emotional spectrum that's available to artists for exploration and and the the vast aesthetic landscapes available to artists, as well as finding ways to fund artists and to support artists that don't make them slaves to the marketplace.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: The people who who do this stuff best are the people who kind of hone their craft and take it on the Road and and they build up a you know a core audience who's really enthusiastic.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like Dave Eugene David Eugene Edwards is a really good example of this.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: He is virtually unknown in the United States, unless you're like a hipster living in New York.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: He is huge in in Europe.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: And he's huge among like all these heavy metal guys because he's putting out something that is serious and that's aggressive.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um Yeah, I mean it's just he's just really he's got this really odd position, which means he will never be asked to record anything on a Christian label.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I say, hallelujah, please don't.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: The more Christians we can get working and being independent voices in mainstream media, um, the better.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: But it but it's it's really it's really hard.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's a there's a filmmaker I interviewed in the in the big book who's who just voiced his frustration about when whenever he tries to go to you know these Christian business people who are making tons of money and they are like, okay, okay, what's the ROI?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: What's the return on investment?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like they never see it as a as a mission uh as as funding missions.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what these guys are, is they're ambassadors to their own culture, they're Christ ambassadors within a dry and hostile land where they need to plan oases.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not how that's not how Christian people who have the means tend to think.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: They tend to think about, well, what do I get out of it?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not that's not how honestly, that's not how the gay, you know, the LGBTQ plus people think about it.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: They invested.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: They invested heavily, and we're seeing the dividends.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_04: And I wanted I wanted to ask you about that because you really you do go into that and say that attitudes towards gay marriage, for example, you know, or generally LGBTQ plus whatever else uh issues have changed so rapidly.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_04: And the thing that changed them was actually incredibly zealous activism of people working within uh within media to create a plausibility structure that was incredibly persuasive for um huge portions of the of the population in the West.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and investing in young talent, screenwriting talent and and and uh cinematographic talent.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the same filmmaker told me about they they had these um these awards for gay film best gay film, and he said in the early years they were just all terrible.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then but they kept supporting them and they kept recognizing those people who did it well, and little by little, you know, they're now a powerhouse in Hollywood.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: So put that together.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, put that together with your chapter sort of against the culture wars.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_02: So we don't want to be culture warriors, but you can recognize where there there have been interest groups that have wanted to shift the the needle in the culture, they have done it through the imagination.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so I I can see why you would absolutely want to subvert the warfare language, um, because we do not wage war carnally, you know, as as 2 Corinthians chapter 10 kind of says, but we do wage war.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: And and that and that is a great chapter in the in the Bible, isn't it, on on the imagination.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_02: We we cast down imaginations, says the King James Bible in in 2 Corinthians um 10, verse 5.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so Paul has a warfare kind of analogy together with the imagination.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I wonder whether um like I I are you saying that imagination is the opposite of warfare?
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because I I I I guess I'd put to you that that perhaps what you're talking about is a warfare.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's just you're subverting the kind of warfare that the rest of the world is going on about.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: And that and that's that's how you're wanting to cast down imaginations.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I would say um 1 Corinthians 10.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: It is 1 Corinthians, right?
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: 2 Corinthians.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_02: Second, 2 Corinthians 10.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: 2 Corinthians 10.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um 2 Corinthians 10, it's it's important to understand the context is church discipline.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the I think the the um the warfare that Paul's talking about is these super apostles coming in and trying to trying to persuade people, oh, we got a better, you don't have to listen to Paul, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and and he's like, no, no, no, we we talk with power.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: So there is and gosh, wouldn't you know the church has a lot of conflict within it, you know, tends to, tends to do, and some of which Paul says is good so that's who you know, so that God can be can show who's got favor and who's doesn't.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um But he he doesn't say um he doesn't say I I mean there are other places like wild beasts in Ephesus and and and things like that where it is a struggle, and and ball and Paul bears the marks on his body of that struggle.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that so um I would say that there is uh there's going to be an inevitable conflict of imaginations, of orientations of imagination, right?
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: There has to be.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: We have a different first love, we have different loyalties.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: We're uh sociologist James Davidson Hunters really uh points this out really well that we're not in some ways we're not even speaking the same language.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what family means, what freedom means, what healthy means, what natural means.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: All of these are are up for grabs right now.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and becoming less up for grabs as a very aggressive uh new majority says, no, no, we're we're tired of the old ways of thinking.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: So there's going to be something like that.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's going to be conflict.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: But it's gotta be a conflict of principles and not a conflict of people, right?
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's got to be it's it's not us forcing people into what we say.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's got to be uh um it's gotta be when we find ourselves in conflict, we also have to love the people we're conflicting with.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I think uh I think culture warriors don't do that well.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: I I think the I I think a lot of people are lashing out in fear and feeling threatened and and saying, oh, we've we've gotta hold the line against the libs and and all of this sort of lingo.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: And they absolutely don't love the people they're opposing, and the people they're opposing know that and say, wait, you're supposed to be following Jesus, but I don't think you are.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I and and I and it's bringing the name Christian more and more into disrepute.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: So there's got to be a different way that we conflict.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: When I talk about cultural subversion, that's a sort of a warfare sort of term.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: When I talk about Jesus planting bombs, he's not actually planting bombs that are going to hurt people, but he is there there are more moments of revelation where people go, whoa, wait a minute.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I and that's a a far more difficult thing to pull off, right?
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: To get somebody to reconsider their own position, to get to get somebody to reconsider their own assumptions about life.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's a gargantuan task.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what artists do, or some artists do very, very well.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's not something that the Christian community typically rewards artists for doing, however.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: They they prefer to have artists speak soothing tones to them and tell them everything's gonna be alright and you are gonna win the culture war.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, something like God's not dead is basically Christians patting themselves on the back saying, Yes, this is we're in the right, and and this movie shows us that we are, which is not the message that the world needs right now, I think.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_04: I suppose I don't know one thing I'm I'm again struck by with the you know what did the LGBT plus community do to change opinions, you know, to persuade people.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, you can look at a series of milestones within popular culture where oh, this was the first, you know, LGBT representation in this area, or this was the first kind of you know, I mean, we're literally just waiting for the first LGBT Disney princess.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, it's sort of you know it feels as though you're just waiting for those kind of thresholds to be broken.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_04: And the challenge that I think you put in in many ways quite rightly to um, let's say evangelical filmmaking, God's not dead and its sequels, you know, being a prime example, is that it continually presents the Christian as hero.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_04: The Christian is the hero of the story, and by being the you know, the hero of the story, this is a Christian story, and you know, you ought to be more Christian.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_04: If there has been in popular culture a real change of opinion on on issues of human sexuality by presenting LGBTQ, you know, through LGBTQ plus representation, is it not the case that we could achieve a a change in the cultural landscape by presenting a Christian hero or a Christian as hero within um let's say film, for example.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_04: You know, when was the last time you you saw a film in which the hero was a Christian that wasn't one of these, you know, poorly made embarrassing to watch cringeworthy, you know, evangelical films?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Joss Wheaton gave Captain America a kind of a throwaway line, you know.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_04: There's only one God.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's only one God.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that that was a beginning, but I wouldn't call that Christian representation.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm I think that um the thing about heroes is they have to be sympathetic.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: And um and just kind of inserting a Christian in there, it would have to be I mean there there are non-Christian films that have presented Christians sympathetically.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like there was a little indie film ten years ago, twelve years ago, called Winter Passing, and one of the one of the main characters was a Christian um played by Will Farrell, of all people.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and uh so it it does happen, but it's really kind of rare because Christians have been using up any goodwill towards them by at least by being very loud and aggressive, at least in the United States.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe very, very different in Britain.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um so uh but the other thing is the the the thing about God is not dead, Christians weren't just the heroes, they were also the victims.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's a there's a huge uh there's a huge sense among evangelicals that we're being victimized and therefore we need to fight back.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I think there was a legit victim uh in Jesus and he didn't fight back and he said father forgive them, they don't know what they're doing, and he was concerned about the people who are who are killing him.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean that's not that's not the vibe that's coming from Christians today.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: So if there was a Christian hero, if if you have a Christian writing a Christian hero, that would be really, really difficult.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think that somebody who's a really good writer could pull it off.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you pull it off well enough and could pitch it well enough, you might even get a studio to green light it, or you might get backers.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um but what it can't be, what it cannot be, is something within the Christian film industry.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's a I did you read that footnote?
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: There there was a a footnote I had about about um this guy who worked for a Christian film uh film studio and wrote this uh wrote this film in which there's a gossipy Christian or somebody who's just super critical, re literal leg legalistic, and uh and they did the film and the feedback they got, you know, they they made a new rule.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: No longer can you have a Christian character who has any serious character flaws.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: No more because that hurts the bottom line.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_04: Is is do you think that's though because the the film executives, the studio executives there are evangelical Christians who who actually aren't especially creative, they're just responsible for the money.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_04: And so they're thinking it plays better with their audience.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think studio execs tend to be businessmen, they don't tend to be artists.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's the first thing.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing is that um Christians are really good at protecting the home team, and so you don't tend to get Christian films that do a deep dive on any of the really serious problems that are afflicting the church, racism, you know, sexual abuse, uh uh abuses of the patriarchal culture, you know, um kudos for Mike Cosper for doing for doing that stuff on Mars Hill.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: And he got so much flack for doing that.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's n there's nothing that I can think of written by a Christian that does the same thing for Christians.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's no there's nothing that would spur a Christian to repentance.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: I I think that's and and the and the world watching knows that.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: Are there are there secular filmmakers that expose secular problems that promote discussion?
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's lots of them, but we don't seem to be able to do that.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have the capacity for that yet, because I think we're we're just feeling so threatened and uh and don't want don't want to be seen as weak before a watching world.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_02: Would you where would you put like mayor of East Town?
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: So Kate Winslett was in you know that that drama series set in New England, and it's very Catholic.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and interestingly, they kind of you know there's there's good priest and bad priest, you know, and so they they kind of embrace both the the abusive side of you know the scandals in that part of the world.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um as well as it was in New England?
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_02: Where was it?
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: Where was it?
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like it was either Pittsburgh.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_04: It was Pennsylvania.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: Pennsylvania, yeah, that's right.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: I read about it.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Pennsylvania.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I I as a as a Pennsylvanian, uh that's where I was raised, that's messed up and ground.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_04: You've got a hoagie just off screen.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's so it's so Catholic.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like the final scene is the uh the bodily assumption of Mary um into the into the attic uh for those who have seen it.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: But um But but I haven't seen it, so I I have to plead ignorance, but what you're saying to me sounds really encouraging and and means I need to put this on my watch list.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: And do you know who wrote it?
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Brad Inglesby, I say his name.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um Do we know anything about where he's coming from?
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: I I think he is Catholic.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um this is another thing, Glenn.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um Catholics have done this well.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: Evangelicals evangelical Protestants haven't.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's and and so it so um uh with the exception of maybe um oh I'm blanking on the name now.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um C.S.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: Lewis?
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh um although yes, but um I'm interested for the book you picked Tolkien.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_04: So that's interesting.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_04: That your example is Tolkien.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um no, um First Reformed.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um who's the writer there?
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um he's even a reformed guy.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: Or was.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh anyway.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean that that seems to tread into that territory, but really weird.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you guys have seen First Reformed.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's not it's a it's a it's a disturbing film in which there's a lot of soul searching, but in the process of soul searching the uh the soul searching pastor kind of loses touch with reality a little bit.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like one of the more discouraging examples is Ted Lasso, isn't it?
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_02: When when you think like Ted Lasso in real life, I mean he at least grew up evangelical.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_02: Like he's he's pretty much Ned Flanders kind of transposed.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_02: And yet the absolute black hole at the heart, spiritually speaking, at the heart of that, you know, when when they have the funeral, there is absolutely no spiritual content, there'sn't there's nothing at the and they end up singing never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you, right?
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_02: And we all kind of chuckle along, and and I'm just sitting there thinking, this is there is a howling wasteland at at the spiritual heart of Ted Lasso when in real life Ted Lasso goes to church, probably.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and that's part of the problem with um I I I think that's a that's maybe a a showrunners slash network problem, um, or or a streaming service problem, because um one of the things I interviewed an actress who is Christian, um, maybe maybe uh grew up evangelical, is is on not exactly evangelical ground anymore, but still a believer, I would say.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: And she said one of the things she runs into is that uh is that streaming services and and uh TV studios are interested in the fruits of faith, like forgiveness and gray, you know, not theological grace, but grace graciousness.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: I believe in belief.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and that sort of thing, family and and courage and stuff like that, but they're not interested in the specifics of the faith because they're because that would alienate audiences.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: So what um so what the challenge for Christian writers is to figure out how to do that but keeping it low-key enough that you're not gonna send people running away and switching off.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and I'm not a television writer, so I I couldn't but I but I would imagine I think what you're responding to, Glenn, is a real missed opportunity in Ted Lasso. 'Cause because he's just a good guy.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: And people, you know, yeah, there are good secular guys out there, but there are also a lot of good Christian people who are not seeking to offend and not seeking to bite their neighbors' heads off and not seeking to, you know, march with a bullhorn in front of a funeral saying God hates gay people or whatever.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: There are decent salt of the earth people there.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: That just doesn't get connected with, at least not in this media environment, uh, doesn't tend to get in connected with with Christian.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_04: You made a sort of uh uh a subtle reference there to uh Westboro Baptist Church and um I did.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_04: Subtle in Westboro, not two words you hear together very often.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_04: There we go.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_04: With Westbrook Baptist Church, we split off with a subtle version of Westboro Baptist Church.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_04: So is it Megan Phelps Roper, who was a member of that family, is now podcast queen extraordinaire after her series on JK Rowling.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_04: Now I'm really interested in the fact that her testimony of you know escape from the Westbrookist Church community is actually about her seeing a kind of a humanity in I forget which actress it was.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_04: There was an actress who died.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_04: Britney Murphy?
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_04: Britney Murphy.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_04: That was it.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_04: And she had seen a Britney Murphy film.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_04: And please forgive me.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_04: I don't think I have ever seen a Britney Murphy film.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_04: But she'd seen a Britney Murphy film and she felt really sad when she heard that Britney Murphy had died.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_04: And it was pursuing that and in conversation with people on Twitter, I think, that she started to have her her sort of, you know, classically the the aspect ratio on her screen changed, and suddenly the world was a much larger, richer, and more complicated place.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_04: Um so I think she's a really interesting example of someone who again was persuaded into a new set of beliefs or into a radically different set of beliefs through the power of uh media.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_04: You know, she felt an emotional connection with with Britney Murphy, even though she'd only really ever seen her in in films and playing a part.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_04: So just the the persuasive power, which I think is part of the thing you're talking about with the Oases of Imagination.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and I the thing about Oases is it's where people can see each other as humans and and sh and and get into art and culture and popular culture that explores shared desires, shared frustrations, shared plights that um that should move us emotionally.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I think what people um respond to negatively against Christians is that they feel so dehumanized by certain Christians, you know, either reduced to you're my project for evangelism or uh I'm just gonna shout and scream at you because you people are going to hell, or you know, Westboro Baptist Church types.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that's all they see of Christians.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's all they know of Christians, because they don't know a lot of Christians.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um my daughter runs into this a lot.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: She lives in California and she's an artist, and uh and people are surprised when they find out she's a Christian, and she says, Really?
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Well, because you're not hateful or anything.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, Well, how many Christians do you actually know personally?
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, Oh.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so uh so that that's powerful testimony of a life lived the way Jesus wants you to live it, loving people rather than trashing them.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: But it also means that there's an extra burden incumbent upon Christian creators to try to show, to try to connect with other people as humans, rather than rather than trying to make your creation into a bullhorn for your perspective, for your worldview.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_02: Ted, is is a lot of the battle actually just releasing Christians and telling them, you know what, you you can actually be an artist.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_02: You can actually run along and be the musician that you've always wanted to be, you can actually be the dancer you've always wanted to be, you can actually be the fine artist you've always wanted to be.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_02: Run along, it's not sub-Christian.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's not you know you're not you're not your your salvation is not in doubt because you're running out into the world with the gifts that God has given you and let a thousand flowers bloom.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_02: Is it like why why doesn't that work?
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like as as just a if we if we want to get Christian art out there, just tell Christians to get out there and do your art in the marketplace.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_02: And if it doesn't get supported by the market, maybe you don't have the gifts you thought you did anyway.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_02: So try your hand at something else.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh okay.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, there's lots of things to say.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, um this is something that let me tell you a story.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was I a couple of years ago, I did uh an apol a Cambridge summer apologetics thing um that was put on by the round church in Cambridge.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I got there, my wife and I got there, and we met this young American guy who's sort of sort of arranging things, and he was like, You ready?
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, uh and I was like, Yeah, I think so.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, Are you nervous?
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, of course I'm nervous.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm coming to the land of Stott, I'm coming to the land of Lloyd Jones, I'm coming to the land of Lewis.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: What could I possibly have to offer you guys?
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like, the I'm coming to the land of J.I.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: Packer for crying out loud.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: What can I and he was like, no, no, no, no, you're thinking about this all wrong.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: We really need what you have to say about culture and worldview.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then he told me a story.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I cannot tell you how many times I have sat with students in a cafe or something like that, and the conversation goes something like this.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: He'll lower his voice and they'll say, I really, I really like medicine, and then a look around to make sure nobody's listening.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: He said, My mom and dad want me to go into the ministry.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: Can I can I serve the Lord as a doctor?
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, no.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's the attitude is if you're going to serve the Lord, you you become ordained.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_00: And everything else is sort of second class.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I would say, yes, a lot of it is is challenging that is saying there is a legitimate calling upon people who are creatively gifted.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: You would be wasted as a pastor.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_00: You ought to be a cinematographer, obviously.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: You should be going painting, you should be writing scripts, you should be making music.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: Please, please don't go into the pastorate.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, churches may hate me for that, but but I think there's something to that.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, there's there's something having to say release them and get them trained up and get them honed in their craft uh and and release them out into the marketplace.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: But the second thing is, and if you don't make it in the marketplace, maybe you don't have any talent.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think that that's a really blunt instrument for something as fragile and as beautiful as an artist.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: I guess you didn't make it.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: Too bad.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: Out you go.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I this is where I would love to see churches treat artists as cultural missionaries.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is where I'd love to see large churches pony up and have an artist in of in residence.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, some churches do that, but it's the it's like the cool hipster artsy churches that are usually in big urban centers or whatever.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to see more churches bring that into discussion because even the small churches support missionaries, right?
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's that's a thing.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's no appetite, there's no awareness that that artists are reaching a set of people that would never ever darken a church door.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_02: And that's something that um And is that set of people the other artists in that community, or is the set of people reaching the culture more generally?
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: And yes.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: Both end.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's the artists move, artists have a sensibility and and see things weird.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: They're just weird, right?
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: They're weirdos.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: And they can connect with other people who see life not neurotypically as well.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like the there's there's just something special about about the way artists perceive things, that they can connect with other artists in a way that um that I think it would be very difficult for your typical Christian who works in finance too, for example.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_00: But also the works themselves, if they are done well, can have a reach far beyond the typical Christian.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: How many Tolkien fans are there out there?
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_00: How many Tolkien fans are there out there?
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: How many David Eugene Zedwards fans are there out there?
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: How many people have been touched by by that dragon cancer?
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: How many people have seen a Kishlovsky film and kind of said, huh?
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's and how much of that is possibly paving territory, or not paving, plowing up territory that could be fertile ground then for when they have a conversation with a Christian and it plants a seed.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying I'm not saying make art so that you can save people, because I think that's putting way too much of a burden on an artist, but make art that that um that makes people more that brings human beings into the space where it's even feasible to talk about.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_02: But all those examples are just great artists, aren't they?
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like like the the reason why they've had the impact that they've had is because they are great at their craft.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_00: But they're also bringing um an ethos of hope in darkness that uh that you don't typically find among a lot of artists.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: When you're talking about this great big gaping spiritual hole, that's where most of the creatives think that's the only way you can maintain intellectual integrity and aesthetic integrity is if you constantly reference the way things are falling apart and decaying and are fragmented, and somehow you s you you have a little bit of hope in there because gosh, aren't we all messed up and we can kind of take comfort in the fact that we're all messed up together, you know, the whole meta modern thing.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's it's just but at the end of the at the end of the day, it's all about finding hope in a universe that gives no meaning, that gives no answer, right?
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's everything everywhere all at once, right?
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's yeah, there's love.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing means anything, but we've got each other.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I think Christians can bring so much more to the table if they can do it in a way that's that's going to get past the BS meter of most non-Christians.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_00: The and and and people have a hair trigger BS meter these days.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much of it flying around.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_04: We're gonna need another two-hour conversation.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_04: But um could you just give us like the shortest definition you can find on meta modern?
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_04: Because I was I was just doing some stuff on this recently.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_04: I think it's really it's probably the latest, like genuinely new idea or term that I've come across in terms of people talking about culture and and and art and the imagination.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_00: So so Ted, what is meta modern?
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm going to uh I am just beginning to get into this myself.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: But as I understand metamodern, and let me let me reference, there's a um there is a great YouTube video called Why Yes, Thomas Flight, why are why are movies why are movies different nowadays?
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_00: And and the way that uh here's how I come at it.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_00: I did my dissertation on Paul Recur.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul Recur coined there's okay.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um Recur coined a term.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he called the he called it the hermeneutics of trust versus the hermen hermeneutics of suspicion.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so hermeneutics for your listeners out there who don't know what it is, it's a it's a a way of interpretation, a way of interpreting life, a way of interpreting anything.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: Hermeneutics of trust says, oh yeah, I'll take you at your at your word and and I'll trust what you have to say, whether that's the Bible or your landlord or whoever, it's just kind of having an openness to the truth.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: A hermeneutics of suspicion came about when uh Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and all of those modern guys came on and says, no, no, no, no, no, things are not as they seem.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's a there's an ulterior motive going on here.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: And and that means you trust nothing.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible is just something to oppress people and to keep them enslaved, and we enlightened types know that that's that it's not true.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_00: And what and his great hope, I guess, was for what he called a second naivete.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_00: That is, we've been through the Enlightenment, it's told us uh that we've we can't really trust anything, but maybe we can break through and grab a sort of ambiguous hope in the fact that maybe there's some meaning after all, but it's really hard to pin down.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I think metamodernism is doing the same thing.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's except it's in reaction not to modernism, where we have like nation and rationality and science as all of these great themes that we can get behind as modern people.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then postmodern comes and says, no, no, no, no, no.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: These are all stupid and divisive and oppressive narratives that marginalize people, and it's you white guys, you white European guys who are who are just trying to take center stage.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_00: And let's just break everything down.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: And postmodernism broke everything down into cynicism and self-referential humor and and all of that sort of stuff.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: And what metamodernism is doing is responding to that fragmentation and that cynicism, which goes nowhere ultimately, and says, okay, we know it's it's doing a Paul Recur, it's doing the second naivete thing.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_00: We know that there's no real coherence in discourse.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's no real coherence in the universe, there's no real meaning there.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_00: But gosh darn it, doesn't it feel like there ought to be?
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_00: And and by embracing performativity, I know this is a performance, but isn't it genuine?
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, by pr by embracing uh the artifice in a way that still tries to like life as Wes Anderson film, that's the best I can put it.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, where where you still you still feel that your heart's getting tugged, even though you know it's a movie.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_00: And isn't that enough?
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's where I'm at right now.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_00: I need to do a whole lot more reading because uh because I I wanna I want to start responding to that because that's where I find my students right now.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_00: Is there is there like we can't we can't believe any of this old stuff, Christianity stuff.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, and but but there's still something there, right?
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us there's something still there, but don't tell us in a way that's going to lay any claim on us ethically.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_00: We still want to do what we want to do.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we know it's all fake.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, here, listen to Bittersweet Symphony by the Veuves.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_02: We'll finish on the song.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um did you guys watch uh oh what's his name?
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_00: Bo Burnham's uh Inside.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_00: That is meta modern.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like he uh especially the way he ends it.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like we had in in our in our um in our COVID our COVID remote uh movie club, we talked about it and like where he's where he's talking about suicide and where he's like getting out enraged when he's just ready to go back on the stage and now he can't, and he's and he's like going crazy, but not crazy enough to not forget to put set up the camera to capture him going crazy.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's all performance, it's really crafted, and it's crafted to seem spontaneous, and he means it.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_04: He is a very complicated man, Bo Burnham.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um incredibly gifted.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_04: And did you see eighth grade, his directorial debut as a movie?
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_00: I did not.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_04: I did not because probably the most depressing film I have ever seen in my entire thing.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_04: That's what I heard.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I was I was not ready for the most depressing film ever.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_00: That and and 13 I what was it?
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_00: There was another there was another uh, you know, teens coming of age and exploring things they probably shouldn't explain, explore.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_04: It was yeah, um it was difficult.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_04: But a genius, and and someone who's making people think and think deeply about themselves and the world and so on and so forth.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_04: So we need a we need a Christian Bo Burnham.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_04: That's what the imagination manifesto will produce.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_04: Is that right?
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_00: Before he got cancelled, I was saying people we need a uh a Christian Joss Whedon, somebody who is somebody who is absolutely allergic to cliche, absolutely, you know, is always looking for uh is always looking for the the kind of unexpected gut punch that kind of goes, wow, where'd that come from?
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's that that's what I that's what I respond to as somebody who's you know older than a millennial, to Buffy, to Firefly.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_00: Post millennial to uh sorry?
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_04: It's a post-millennial.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_04: It's an eschatology joke, don't worry.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yes Nate went to Westminster.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um I mean generation wise I'm pre-mill, but I'm not eschatology-wise pre-mill.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, yeah.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_02: So we need hope.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_02: We uh hopeful eschatology actually helps, but um uh yeah, we need hope and we need to tell stories of hope out there in the world.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I hope that uh your books um absolutely inspire that in people.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there is Imagination Manifesto that people can grab or Oasis of Imagination.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_02: And uh Ted, uh it's been wonderful that you spared time for us.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh just anywhere else that people can catch up with you uh online?
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm occasionally on Twitter.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I mentioned my my website, tedturno.com.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh had to pay for that domain name, so make use of it, people.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_00: And um and I'll be at Keswick in week three, and uh and I I much prefer to talk to people face to face uh about the Pittsburgh Steelers or Kyshlovsky or anything else.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um and if you're if if anybody's you know passing through Prague, drop me a line.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_02: Sounds great.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_02: We'd love to do that.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_00: Ted Tenel, thanks so much.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_00: Take care, guys.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there we go.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you enjoyed that conversation.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_01: Plenty more where that came from.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_01: If you're interested in this sort of thing, engaging with art from a Christian perspective, do check out Nate Morganlock's channel, Reformed Mythologist, youtube.com forward slash at reformed mythologist, and subscribe there to get Nate's takes on the latest films, music videos, that kind of thing.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_01: We've done a series on franchise storytelling, looking at Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings and all the big franchises, really, Star Wars and and thinking about the theology of them.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_01: So do go and check that out.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of under the Speak Life umbrella.
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_01: And also, if you want to take things further, come along to our intensive.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's in September.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_01: Details are on the Speak Life website, speaklife.org.uk forward slash foundry.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_01: And we don't have uh any correspondence for this week, but uh if you have any thoughts on this episode or previous episodes, do send an email to info at speaklife.org.uk and we will read some of those out on the show.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_01: That'd be a lot of fun.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, have a great weekend.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_01: God bless, and we will see you next week.