Inside Story

Comic Books, the Terminator movies, the blues, and the baseball season opener. Brady Bunch jokes, basketball play-offs, The Simpsons, mystery novels, the "Achy Breaky," Motown, and an occasional Irish folksong. Toni Braxton, world music, Frida Kahlo, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. These are a few of our favorite things ... One way or another, all of us here at Sojourners have contact with popular culture--whether it's a valued way to blow off steam or relax after a long day, the source of a generational common language, or the annoying, inescapable background noise to (post) modern life. And we've been talking here for years about how Christians might best relate to pop culture. What does it mean to be in the world, not of it? We sure haven't come up with one single answer. Culture coverage has always been an integral part of our work, because we know that sometimes for good, sometimes for ill, sometimes for both, pop culture affects what it means for us to be faithful. In this issue we focus more explicitly on the continuing conversation--about values and art, faith and entertainment, and idols of all sorts--that frames our coverage. David Batstone, a theologian, culture scholar, and frequent contributor to our pages from the West Coast, and "Culture Watch" editor and comic book collector Bob Hulteen worked together to conceptualize our feature section and to solicit and edit the articles. The section was assembled over the modem and fax lines between Montara, California; Minneapolis; and Washington, D.C. The medium is the message?