Vanhoozer, Kevin J., Charles A. Anderson, and Michael J. Sleasman, eds. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007.  288 pp. $23.99.  ISBN: 978-0-8010-3167-0.

[1] “This is a book about everyday theology, written by everyday theologians for everyday theologians” (7), writes editor Kevin J. Vanhoozer in the preface to this book. “Everyday theology,” as Vanhoozer and the other contributors to this book understand it, entails using the basic conceptual tools of Christian theology (and particularly, Protestant evangelical, biblical theology) to analyze, interpret, or “read” everyday (popular and widespread) cultural texts and trends.  Vanhoozer frames the main task of the book in the opening chapter: there he both explains and defends “How and Why Christians Should Read Culture” (the subtitle of the chapter).  In what follows, the other contributors to this book—whose essays originally were written for Vanhoozer’s annual seminar on “Cultural Hermeneutics” at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School—follow a basic formula: describing and then interpreting various cultural texts (including the grocery store checkout line, the music of Eminem, and megachurch architecture) as well as various cultural trends (including Internet blogging and fantasy funerals).  The book ends with a practical chapter on how to develop the awareness and skills necessary to be an effective everyday theologian.

[2] As the book and its authors make abundantly clear, everyday theology is not a specialized discipline.  In particular, this is not something academic theologians typically do; although, all of the authors seem to be in agreement that everyday theology is something that all interested Christians (theologians or otherwise) should do.  Christians should not only be competent readers of the Bible (in particular); they also should be competent readers of the cultural texts and trends or “signs” that populate the cultural landscape they inhabit.  Why?  First, culture for these evangelical authors (as for other recent evangelicals Vanhoozer points to), “is not merely ‘secular’ in the sense of this-worldly, but an open window through which blows the flesh air of transcendence” (33).  Cultural texts and trends, then, are in some sense theological and incarnational, imbued with theological meaning and even a common grace.  Second, and most important from Vanhoozer’s point of view, learning to read cultural texts and trends from an everyday theological point of view is required because “the mission of the church demands it.  Cultural illiteracy is harmful to our spiritual health” (34).  Thus, it seems that Christians need to be able to name and know cultural texts and trends not only to understand them but also to criticize and challenge them, especially where—despite their latent aspiration towards the transcendent—they often challenge or seek to undermine traditional biblical, Christian beliefs and values.

[3] So insofar as the book primarily seeks to raise popular cultural awareness, its ambitions are much more pastoral than academic.  The goal here is for readers (whom I suspect will be largely if not entirely evangelical) to become good everyday theologians so that they may continue to be true to the practical evangelical goal of being “in” the world but not “of” the world; or, as Jeremy Lawson, Michael Sleasman, and Charles Anderson put it in their contribution “The Gospel according to Safeway: The Checkout Line and the Good Life,” being “in” the checkout line (where popular magazines offer a superficial and disordered view of the good life) rather than “of” it (78).

[4] The best essays, in my view, engage the most substantive and provocative cultural texts and trends: for example, The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (a text) and transhumanism (a trend), both raise important theological questions about the nature of the human person as well as the future of the human person, and thus rightly deserve more serious theological attention.  Less important and less provocative essays engage, again in my view, less substantive and less provocative cultural texts and trends.  For example, while I enjoy listening to (at least some of) Eminem’s music, and I enjoy watching films like Gladiator, I do not share the authors’ convictions that these popular cultural media express significant religious or theological impulses and hence command our theological attention—even mild, everyday theological attention.  This is not to say that all popular cultural texts and trends are undeserving of theological attention; only that theologians—everyday or otherwise—need to be discriminating about which ones really are deserving of such attention.

[5] Whatever my reservations about the depth and importance of everyday theology, I enjoyed reading and learning more about megachurch architecture, transhumanism, and blogging.  I also enjoyed, although to a lesser extent, learning about how evangelicals think about these things.  In the end, then, I think Everyday Theology will benefit those who identify as evangelicals more so than those who do not.

Paul Macdonald
Bucknell University
paul.macdonald@bucknell.edu