On the Inculturation of the Gospel into Popular Culture
Many of you may be aware of the Italian nun, Sister Cristina, the one who won the Italian version of “The Voice” last year. On November 11, after winning “The Voice,” she released her first album. Now, just imagine the reaction of the people when they realized that she was singing her version of the controversial pop star Madonna’s hit “Like a Virgin.”
This brought two attitudes: For some it has not been easy to get used to the idea that a nun has won a TV talent show and become something like a “pop star.” For others, she has been a breath of fresh air. For everybody she is a complete novelty.
Inevitably we could find people in the first group asking questions: where did the idea come from? Or, what is she trying to do? Does she realize that she may cause a storm not to mention the endless jokes and disapproving remarks on social networks?
Some others say that she is just trying to “baptize” evil music.
Here is a short passage from the interview of Sister Cristina with the Italian catholic newspaper “Avvenire.”
Who prompted you to sing “Like a Virgin” by Madonna?
“I chose it. And I did it with no intention to provoke or scandalize. Reading the text, without being influenced by previous interpretations, you discover that it is a song about the power of love to renew people, to rescue them from their past. And this is the way that I wanted to interpret it. For this reason we have transformed this song from the pop-dance piece which it was, into a romantic ballad. Something more similar to a lay prayer, than to a pop piece”.
Many of the ones that agree with Sister Christina say that it is about time the Church gets involved in popular culture. This does not mean that we have to forget all we had before (e.g. classical & sacred music), but we have to use the new means this culture is offering us.
Also, they could say that she is touching people that she would never have been able to reach, were it not for her music. As an example, her “singing coach” in “the Voice” said that he had an encounter with God thanks to Sister Christina’s music; and this was not just a coincidence, for Sister Christina is well aware that she is evangelizing. She says, “I know that I have a great responsibility. I have to give a testimony. And I do it willingly. Because I am thrilled to have met Christ and I wish everyone could meet him.”
But, could she (and the Church) use more “classical music” and give the same testimony of Christ?
Let me tell you some real stories.
In the early 2000s, the local railway company Tyne and Wear, in the north of England, decided to do something about the problem of youths hanging around its train stations. The young people were “not getting up to criminal activities,” but they were “swearing, smoking at stations and harassing passengers.” So the railway company unleashed “blasts of Mozart and Vivaldi.”
Apparently it was a roaring success. The youth fled. “They seem to loathe [the music],” said the proud railway guy. He said the most successful deterring music included the Pastoral Symphony by Beethoven, Symphony No. 2 by Rachmaninov, and Piano Concerto No. 2 by Shostakovich.
In Hollywood (in County Down in Northern Ireland, not to be confused with Hollywood in California), local businesspeople encouraged the council to pipe classical music as a way of getting rid of youngsters who were spitting in the street and painting graffiti. Apparently, classical music defeated street art: The graffiti levels fell.
In January 2010, it was revealed that West Park School, in Derby in the midlands of England, was “subjecting badly behaved children to Mozart and other classical authors. In “special detentions,” the children are forced to an hour of classical music as a deterrent against future bad behaviour. Apparently, the number of disruptive pupils has fallen by 60 per cent since the detentions were introduced.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that classical music is bad. Not at all. What I am trying to get at is that we cannot try to approach people with a tool that they would dislike. Instead, we need to approach our own culture in light of the Church’s teaching on inculturation, which means that the Gospel must take flesh within the culture in which we live. In doing so, we need to be aware of the challenges of pop culture, but also the opportunities it presents. The work of inculturation means that we have to translate the values of the Gospel into a language that makes sense today, but it also means that we have to purify this language so that it can support the Gospel message. This is the balance we need – we can’t arrogantly ignore pop culture, but we also have to work to transform it! We need to engage people where they are at and help them make sense of their everyday life. Engaging pop culture is a necessary part of that effort, a work of accompaniment that helps us understand how people think and how they are formed in their ordinary experience.
Therefore, is it good to use popular music as a means of evangelization, as Sister Christina is saying?
Josef Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI) very briefly treats pop music in his work, Spirit of the Liturgy: “On the one hand, there is pop music … aimed at the phenomenon of the masses, is industrially produced, and ultimately has to be described as a cult of the banal.” The cult of the banal would keep us trapped in the ordinary, flat, and boring aspects of life. It doesn’t move us beyond to an experience of the transcendentals – such as truth, beauty, and goodness. We cannot deny that the cult of the ugly has largely grown to dominate our culture and even the Church in some respects.
Roger Scruton, a British philosopher, in his book Modern Culture, also argues along these lines, insisting on the priority of high culture over the popular: “It is my view that the high culture of our civilization contains knowledge which is far more significant than anything that can be absorbed by the channels of popular communication.” Pop culture has descended from folk cultures into a “commercialized mish-mash.” Nonetheless, Scruton also recognizes that pop culture still essentially helps cultivate our identity.
This could question the extent to which pop music can be used for evangelization. Pop culture is largely banal, and much worse than that, it largely contains a damaging moral message. Rather than profound truth, goodness, and beauty, we largely find low passions and bad morals; and bad messages have bad effects. For example, a video producer shows the result of the research from the Rand Corporation: “Young people who listen to music with ‘sexually degrading’ lyrics that describe women as sex objects were almost twice as likely to start being sexually active within the next two years than teens who listened to little or no sexually degrading music.”
Now, this sounds like the only problem is in the lyrics. But, is it? What about loud music, heavy metal, or similar kinds of music? Loud music results in a disturbed state of mind and a disturbed state of mind doesn’t lead you anywhere. Moreover, according to Dr Katrina McFerrin, a music therapist and researcher, “teenagers are easily depressive because the way they listen to music, especially, heavy metal music. This could easily lead to suicidal tendencies. “
It is true, but we have to remember that Sister Christina is not using “heavy metal” or things alike, she is using more moderate kinds of music, such as ballades, pop, and indie. Besides, she uses her music as a means of evangelization, as she says, “the best answer to give to those who criticise me it is not what I say, but what Pope Francis says. The Church, as he shows us, is alive and must go out. And then everyone has to put at the service of the community their talentsat the risk of going against the current. ”
As sister Christina suggested, we turn to Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, where we find a call to take up contemporary expressions:
“The Church should encourage the use of the arts in evangelization, building on the treasures of the past but also drawing upon the wide variety of contemporary expressions. We must be bold enough to discover new signs and new symbols, new flesh to embody and communicate the word, and different forms of beauty, including those unconventional modes of beauty which may mean little to the evangelizers, yet prove particularly attractive for others.” By “others,” he is referring to the people we are trying to evangelize.
Also, Bishop James Conley wrote in his new book “Our Pop Culture Moment, “I know that pop culture matters. When I talk to young people about gay marriage, they’re more likely to cite Macklemore (a rapper) than Maureen Dowd (a columnist for The New York Times and best-selling author); and music, perhaps more than any other art form today, is a tool of self-identification. For many people, especially young people, the kind of music you like is intimately related to how you dress, whom you hang out with, or, even, who you are.”
Given this profound influence, we certainly cannot ignore pop culture, but how do we judge the worth of pop culture and how to use it best?
There could be two different ways to engage popular culture:
1) Saying that The Gospel must infuse our cultural experience and saturate it to the point that it shapes our ordinary experience. This means that we bring the Gospel into the popular forms, meaningin other words, Christian Rock.
Or:
2) Saying that we need to engage pop culture to speak the language of the day and to understand where people are coming from, but we also need to move them beyond a simple acceptance of that experience. This means we need to value and use pop culture in order to help the people of today.
My conclusion is that, we need to turn to wholesome, simple things that are accessible, that is, popular, and yet noble and that reflect the deepest truths of life, which does not mean Christian Rock or Pop. I don’t think it is a good idea to mix the sacred (Gospel) with the profane (popular music). Popular music can have good values and morals and can be a great tool of evangelization, but should NOT become sacred music. Popular culture is not the end, but an important tool as we work for the renewal of culture. Let’s hope that we can end up creating a new popular culture, imbued with better values and enriching people’s lives all the more.
Br Sergio Colin, LC studies humanities at the Legion of Christ Novitiate and College of Humanities.
March 8, 2016