Detweiler, Craig, and Barry Taylor. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003. 351 pp., $17.99 (USD). ISBN: 0-8010-2417-X.

[1] Can traces of the sacred be detected in the wastelands of contemporary commercial culture? Does the apparent "re-enchantment" of Western culture represent anything more than a decadent flirtation with obsolete spiritualities? Craig Detweiler and Barry Taylor’s provocative study is an exuberant evaluation of what Douglas Coupland memorably named our “accelerated culture.” As the spiritually ambitious subtitle of A Matrix of Meanings suggests, its authors find holy possibilities in unexpected sources. Detweiler and Taylor–both of whom combine university or seminary teaching posts with parallel vocations in the creative arts–represent a sanguine alternative to the rather gloomy construal of popular culture offered by other theologians of the postmodern. In True Religion (2003), for example, Graham Ward, a leading voice in the “Radical Orthodoxy” movement (a group of Anglican and Catholic theologians), claims that the appropriation of sacred imagery in pop culture reduces religion to a banal and depthless “special effect.” He concludes that in our globalized, desire-driven economy religion and consumerism are inseparable.  Detweiler and Taylor, by contrast, insist that even a rapaciously materialistic culture is littered by signs of grace and echoes with the sounds of a perennial quest for the divine:  “We’re here to confirm what we all inherently sense–that something big, brash, and shockingly spiritual is happening” (17). The “rumours of glory” that the Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn once ruminated on are found by these daring theologians in every conceivable irreligious space: noir thriller and MTV, catwalks, and rap videos, for example, are all regarded as potential sources of revelation.

[2] A Matrix of Meanings runs counter to assumptions regarding the primacy of Christian- sanctioned culture. This will not be news to those restless spiritual seekers who have already rejected institutional religion. However, it might represent a radical reassessment for others who retain a fairly orthodox faith but are frustrated by the aesthetic limitations of their tradition. There are significant precedents in the field: Eric Mazur and Kate McCarthy’s edited collection God in the Details: American Religion in Popular Culture (2001), for example, provides a more scholarly, rather more focused account of contemporary spiritual practice via culture and the arts. Tom Beaudoin’s Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X (2000), frequently cited in this book, is a crucial influence and, like Beaudoin, Detweiler and Taylor are fascinated by the "amniotic fluid" of music videos, fashion, and art as a surrogate for traditional sacred spaces.  Individual chapters focus on advertising, celebrity, music, and television, for example, and the book reflects the ascendancy of the image in contemporary culture by omitting substantial reference to literature.

[3] The co-authors draw on a methodology that “reverses the hermeneutical flow” pioneered by Larry Kreizer’s theological–primarily Pauline–readings of film: “We construct our theology through a pop cultural matrix, allowing pop culture to speak for itself before we apply biblical interpretation” (10).  The book does not diminish scriptural authority–indeed more sceptical readers may find the frequent biblical quotations distracting–but wisely argues that the ways in which the Bible is read cannot be divorced from the creative noise of the Zeitgeist. The writers do not make a fetish of contemporary culture (“Modernism isn’t the enemy. Postmodernism isn’t the solution” [24]), but the book does lack a sense of the distinction between different genres and vocabularies of cultural expression. Cultural theorists such as Michel de Certeau, Jacques Derrida, and Jean Baudrillard are referenced without recourse to unhelpful philosophical jargon. Yet a clearer sense of a theoretical framework would have made this a still stronger contribution to the field. Similarly, the authors might have followed up the negative associations of their claim that “[p]op culture shapes who we are and who we’re becoming” (20). Is this always desirable and are there ways of resisting the extremes of an overbearing pop culture?

[4]  A Matrix of Meanings certainly reflects the chaotic, information-dazed atmosphere of the age. Detweiler and Taylor argue that “[p]ostmodernity cuts and pastes, scans and surfs . . . We’re interactive and interrelated, practicing a different form of thinking” (34). The writers’ swift movement between ideas and images with multiple illustrations from any and every area of pop culture is both blessing and curse. Their mischievously catholic approach to the postmodern creative impulse–whether aesthetically innovative or crassly commercial–is impressive and the range of reference astonishing (the index contains more than 1600 entries). However, the readings of individual texts are too impatient to be genuinely useful. Like those who spend too much time on-line, I suspect that many readers will be left rather disorientated by the confusion of names and reference points.

[5]  At the close of the twentieth century, Peter Berger rejected secularization and affirmed that the world was as “furiously religious” as ever. In A Matrix of Meanings, Detweiler and Taylor define a series of creative ways in which this pluralist, “furiously religious” culture can be negotiated. Their emphasis, inflected by the ostensibly materialist disciplines of cultural studies and sociology, is on new ways of encountering the mysteries of faith: “We must rethink, reform, reinvent, and reimagine the gospel for the times in which we live” (296). For people of faith discouraged by the absence of imaginative potential in their church, this book will present an energizing resource; for sceptics convinced that Christianity is sustained only by a retreat to conservative thought, A Matrix of Meanings might embody an illuminating alternative story of spirituality and the postmodern moment.

Andrew Tate
Lancaster University
Lancaster, UK
a.tate@lancaster.ac.uk