I don't really know the right way to respond to the recent accusation that I am a critic. On the one hand I'm tempted to thank my mother who always encouraged me to express myself, to thank my wife for sticking with me through the lean years, to thank the Academy....

On the other hand, being critical of fundamentalist culture doesn't seem to justify such a high honor. I might have been just as honored by receiving a Nobel Peace Prize for putting on my socks.

But it does give us an opportunity to repeat what I take to be an important point.

We are speaking here about a culture: a set of virtues, values, and aspirations, a presumption about what is permissible and what is unacceptable. Fundamentalism has a culture; it permits things, it honors things, and it condemns things. This is not news. We were saying this in April of 2005, and it wasn't cutting edge stuff even then.

A few are curious to know how I'm different from Fundamentalist culture. To satisfy that curiosity would involve a cumbersome list of dissimilarities, but one of the more obvious dissimilarities is cunningly concealed in the word culture. I am not a culture. I have never been a culture, and I've made no preparations to become a culture.

This is surprisingly important to bear in mind. As objectionable as I might be to some, it's a bit of a reach to equate what I write with what a culture does.

When we look at a culture we see three essential components. Culture isn't limited to the arts, but I will use the terms from the art world. It won't be hard for you to make the applications.

There are the poets, the painters, the dancers, the artists; the people who give expression to ideas the entire society considers. Then there are the critics who bring a certain skill at explaining how successful that expression is. And finally there is the audience. We may tend to think that the audience is the least important because it is the least skilled. In a sense it is the most important because it is really in the audience that these ideas live healthy lives. What an artist makes and what a critic judges is really not all that significant if it doesn't help the people in the audience make widgets, enjoy their leisure, and bury their dead.

Some resent the presence of the critic. We know fundamentalists do.

But before we accept their judgment we should think about what a society would be like if it didn't have critics. We at Remonstrans had the uncanny prescience to arrange a demonstration.

You will recall our suggestion that you read the poetry of Adele Sakler. Some Emergents came over to thank us for recommending her work, and they did this with a view to discouraging us: they thought that by letting us know that we unwittingly advanced her reputation, we'd think twice about doing that again!

But if you read their justification of Ms. Sakler's work, you'll notice that they had nothing to contribute on the subject of its quality. No one could tell us what was good about it. What did they say?

They commended her for being strong enough in her faith to share her struggles and her doubts. If she'd howled at the moon they would have been satisfied. They respected her blog for being a place where people can come to discuss theology, experiences, and feelings. Even they do not like her work; they engage in exercises of personal validation. How Sakler compares to Rossetti is beyond them.

If you want to see a culture that celebrates drivel, check out Emergence: the dead end of American Evangelicalism. They don't do art over there, they validate personal expression. And while we're sure they see personal validation as a great thing, they forget that the audience gets nothing out of it.

And all of this is not too unlike Fundamentalists who honor inept leadership because they prefer "men of action". They validate activism irrespective of what it produces. Don't ask them what kind of action we should honor, just validate the activism.

Whether the audience is helped? whether the whole is benefitted by the blunders of the few? that escapes their concern.

I'm wondering if this is wise.