Forget effete eastern elites, here's Myers of Mars Hill

Insight on the News, March 9, 1998 by Julia Duin

A former editor at National Public Radio is emerging as the cultural doyen of evangelical Christians. `We don't want to damn the cultural elite,' he says. `We want to be the cultural elite!

Ken Myers decided in 1993 that the world needed something different -- like an All Things Considered with a Christian twist. "The best antidote to bad culture is good culture," says the 45-year-old radio journalist, "and I was tired of bellyaching about bad the culture was."

So Myers created Mars Hill Audio, an "audio magazine" modeled after the popular National Public Radio, or NPR, show. Mars Hill is a reference to an account in Acts 17 of the apostle Paul's visit to the marketplace in Athens

"Symbolically, that is where Paul addresses the cultural elite of his day," says Myers, a former arts and humanities editor for NPR. "Paul desperately wanted to get to Athens and preach to that particular crowd."

So does Myers. Four times a year, Mars Hill produces 90-minute cassette tapes with interviews on everything from religion in Leonard Bernstein's music to moral problems inherent in the novel The Bridges of Madison County (see sidebar).

The tapes are sent to more than 6,000 people interested in faith and public life, including policy wonks such as Ginny Thomas, who works for House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas and is married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

"If Christians are to pursue loving their neighbors wisely," says Myers, "it behooves them to be as well-informed as possible." If that means being conversant with the likes of Oprah, Geraldo and Jerry Springer, so be it.

"There's a need for Christians to be theologically and culturally aware," says Michael Cromartie, a senior fellow for the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington and a member of Mars Hill's board of directors. "Ken's a widely read person in many areas, and the tapes provide people who don't have the time to read everything with a way to keep abreast of what's going on."

According to Myers, the typical churchgoer is clueless about popular culture, especially to questions of beauty and imagination. "I was struck with how culturally illiterate Christians were," he says. "There's a temptation to see the culture as so far gone that you act monastic toward it."

Myers, who produces Mars Hill in offices in Charlottesville, Va., recently hosted a Mars Hill convention in Washington. The topic of one seminar was whether the judiciary -- the Supreme Court in particular -- are acting beyond its constitutionally assigned powers. Myers asked subscribers attending the convention if the Supreme Court overreached itself by overturning state laws that regulated or forbade abortion. The courts may be reflecting what the American people really want: unlimited abortion at any point during pregnancy and assisted suicide.

Not at all, protested one man. Such rulings are "the expression of a vocal and active minority," he said. "There's no reason why Christians can't have equal impact."

"In other words," Myers replied, "we don't want to damn the cultural elite, we want to be the cultural elite, right?"

The discussion swung to the quality of dialogue many Mars Hill listeners have with friends and colleagues in an era when conservative opinions are discouraged and inclusivity rules. "The ability to have conversation is almost gone," one woman complained, "and the ability of colleagues to admit to having values is very unpopular. In many places, we can't even have debate. Without debate, you can't have opposing points of view."

Many conferees agreed that ministers avoid weighty political or cultural topics during church services. "Ministers aren't providing the tools for our parishioners to say what's going on here," said John Palafoutas, a Washington lobbyist who chairs the board of Mars Hill. "They aren't providing a life view for their parishioners. When you look at periodicals like Christianity Today, the most definitive pieces are on abortion and homosexuality. Too many evangelicals fail to have a worldview that encompasses more than what we do with our bodies."

According to Myers, evangelical Christians are overly suspicious of the physical and the sensual, which is why they have had limited impact on popular culture. "Culture is the way we pursue what it means to be human," he says. "All cultural life, from the arts to literature and politics, cooking and sports, are ramifications of what it means to be embodied spiritual beings living in space and time,"

People were created to delight in that," says Myers. "But I think there's a deep Gnostic attitude among American evangelicals. They are suspicious about the fact they live in bodies, and they are not willing to delight in the fact they've been given an embodied existence."

But the second person of the Trinity still has a body, Myers points out. "After the Resurrection, when Jesus cooked a breakfast on the beach for his disciples, I see the fact that Jesus still paid attention to his cooking," he says. "And he probably had to fillet the fish."