Elsewhere Roger Scruton describes the sphere of culture. For those who want to pursue the matter, I think Culture Counts is also not a bad place to start.

What should we include in the category of culture? The answer is suggested by my argument, which has pointed to a certain kind of judgment as central to the phenomenon. A culture consists of all those activities and artifacts which are organized by the "common pursuit of true judgment," as T. S. Eliot once put it. And true judgment involves the search for meaning through the reflective encounter with things made, composed, and written, with such an end in view.

It is hard to conceive of the activities and artifacts of contemporary Christianity ever rewarding a search for meaning. The activities and artifacts of contemporary Christianity certainly are not organized with such a pursuit in mind.

And it is no easier to come up with a persuasive argument that Christians should be averse to looking. But I can promise you won't find many fellow-pilgrims; I think you will find religious people fond of kitsch the way a pig is fond of muck.

They will also be suspicious of any loathsome second books you bring to the discussion. I'm suggesting you may have to think this through by yourself. You might meet with interested people in a local broom closet.

But I think it is worth it.

We spoke some time ago about the place of criticism in culture. Criticism is essential to the true judgment Eliot and Scruton talk about. What we often see today is the sort of reform that fixates on revamping hymnals or writing newer hymns or marketing slightly less dated nonsense by "people you can trust". By criticism we don't mean personal opinions about the proper proportions of melody to rhythm, and we're certainly not talking about abandoning aesthetics.

It doesn't matter if we come up with 500 new hymns by Friday if they are all bad hymns. If they merely preserve the emotional attachments of yesteryear, we will not be better off.  And if they just update religious meaninglessness, how will we have benefitted?

Scruton will help you understand the relationship between knowledge and feeling, the uses of criticism, and how one teaches culture.

It's worth your time.

_____________________
Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged
Roger Scruton
Encounter Books
ISBN: 978-1-59403-194-6