Interpreting Your World - by Justin Ariel Bailey (Paperback)

About the Book

This accessibly written book offers an approach to cultural engagement that is attentive to the hunger for meaning, beauty, and justice and that is governed by the gospel virtues of faith, hope, and love.

Book Synopsis

Whether we interpret Scripture or culture, it matters what we do, not just what we think or feel. How do we live with our interpretation, and how do we live it out? This book helps us understand how culture forms us as political actors, moves us aesthetically, shapes the rhythms of our lives, and connects (or disconnects) us from God and neighbors we are called to love. The goal is to be equipped to engage culture with greater fluency and fidelity in response to the triune God.

This short, accessible introduction to the conversation between theology and culture offers a patient, thoughtful, and theologically attuned approach to cultural discernment. It helps us grow our interpretive skill by training our intuition and giving us a slower, more deliberate approach that accounts for as much of the complexity of culture as possible. The book explores 5 dimensions of culture--meaning, power, morality, religion, and aesthetic--and shows how each needs the others and all need theology. Each chapter includes distinctive practices for spiritual formation and practical application. Foreword by Kevin J. Vanhoozer.

From the Back Cover

"Equal parts innovative, surprising, and enlightening"

Interpreting Your World equips readers to engage culture with greater fluency and fidelity in response to the triune God. It offers an approach that is attentive to the hunger for meaning, beauty, and justice and that is governed by the gospel virtues of faith, love, and hope.

"Justin Bailey's theology is a theology of flourishing, a theology that understands an artist's heart. His discourse enters into culture not just to engage it but to liberate it. This is a theology that is integrated and quite beautiful to behold. Interpreting Your World offers a lens for cultural goodness and for the sanctification of our imaginations; it is an invitation into new creation."
--Makoto Fujimura, artist and author of Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

"Bailey's treatment of faith and culture is penetrating, nuanced, and sane. Readers are in sure hands here."
--Cornelius Plantinga, author of Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin

"Bailey offers readers a profound gift. With clarity and skill, he introduces us to the dynamic ways theology and culture intersect. Rejecting simplistic and reductionistic Christian understandings, this book introduces us to the complex field of human action and divine grace that we call 'culture.'"
--Matthew Kaemingk, Richard John Mouw Institute of Faith and Public Life, Fuller Theological Seminary

"Bailey's fresh approach to widening the framework for Christian dialogue with culture comes as a creative reimagining of a topic that is sometimes oversimplified. This book provides an accessible path for navigating the broad contours of the theology-culture conversation and diversifies our ways of understanding and imagining Christian life in the world today."
--Jennifer Allen Craft, Point University, West Point, Georgia

"Equal parts innovative, surprising, and enlightening, this book sings. It should be required reading for any person of faith who is asking how to engage culture in more robust and life-giving ways--which is to say, everyone should read this book. I cannot recommend it highly enough."
--Kutter Callaway, Fuller Theological Seminary; coauthor of Theology for Psychology and Counseling

About the Author

Justin Ariel Bailey (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is professor of theology at Dordt University in Sioux Center, Iowa. He is an ordained minister in the Christian Reformed Church and has served as a pastor in diverse settings, including Filipino American, Korean American, and white American. Bailey hosts the In All Things podcast, and his writing has appeared in Christianity Today. He is the author of Reimagining Apologetics: The Beauty of Faith in a Secular Age.