The Catholic Culture Podcast: 164 – When “engaging the culture” means loving mediocrity

August 17, 2023

Today, we Christians are expected to “engage with the culture” for evangelism. Often, “engage with the culture” means paying obsessive attention to popular commercial entertainment to show nonbelievers how trendy we are, trying to find a “Christ figure” in every cartoon movie, and making worship music as repetitive, melodically bland, and emotionally charged as possible. Beyond a certain point, “engage with the culture” starts to seem like a noble excuse for enjoying mediocre things. And unfortunately, Christians love mediocre entertainment as much as the next person.

The new doctrine of “cultural engagement” is just one of the themes explored in Joshua Gibbs’ challenging and entertaining new book.
Loving What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul from MediocrityJoshua joins Tomas Milas for a wide-ranging conversation about how we spend our free time and why it’s important.

Topics include:

• The Dangers of Artistic Mediocrity
• The Importance of Boredom
• Why streaming is the worst thing for the music industry
• Different Types of Christian “Cultural Activists”
• The unusual and the ordinary, and how both are threatened by the ordinary.
• How the “special” imitates the sacred
• The memeification of art

link

Gibbs, Loving What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul from Mediocrity https://circeinstitute.org/product/love-what-lasts/

Gibbs: “Cinema as Metaphysical Coup” https://circeinstitute.org/blog/film-metaphysical-coup/

Thomas’ favorite episode of Gibbs’ podcast was: proverb https://shows.acast.com/proverbial/episodes/how-to-buy-a-bottle-of-wine

Gibbs Classic

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