Back in 2005, for Volume 68 of the Journal, Ken gave a thoughtful answer to this question, which we provide here for listeners who are newer to — or just curious about — Mars Hill Audio. 

People often ask me how I come up with ideas for features on the Journal.  The quick, if question-begging, answer is that I read a lot of periodicals and publishers’ catalogs which announce forthcoming books, looking for authors whose work seems to offer some insight into our cultural moment. I said that’s a “question-begging” response because it leaves undefined the issue of what criteria I use for identifying potential insight.

Among the criteria for insightfulness is an attention to cultural forms and institutions. One approach to understanding culture is to focus on the ideas and beliefs that are explicitly sustained, and to trace a history or genealogy of ideas. Following the dictum that ideas have consequences, it is thus assumed that the values, practices, and institutions of a culture reflect fundamental beliefs. According to this method, the history of philosophy has a certain pride of place in understanding how a culture’s values have taken shape. And if one wants to challenge or change a culture’s values or practices, one challenges fundamental beliefs, showing them to be faulty, inconsistent, or of dubious origin.

This is a helpful and often fruitful approach to understanding cultural life, and it would be entirely adequate if human beings were brains in vats, that is, if culture was purely an abstract matrix of ideas.

We are not, however (and praise God), just brains in vats. We are, to borrow a phrase from Marion Montgomery, created rational souls incarnate. We live in bodies in space and time. Our beliefs take shape in cultural forms, and those forms, effected by ideas, become causes of other things, sometimes of further ideas. Ideas have antecedents: they come from somewhere, and not always simply from the cross-pollination of earlier ideas. Values, commitments, and beliefs are all influenced by, sometimes to a great extent, the concrete shape of our life together. So, for example, a body of assumptions about human nature that might be labeled “individualism” contributes to cultural institutions that protect and advance individual autonomy, such as the prevalence of individually owned and operated automobiles as opposed to vigorous public support for mass transit. But living in a society with a complex network of individualistic institutions lends great plausibility to beliefs about the individual. Ideas have consequences, but ideas are also shaped and nurtured in the context of concrete experience.

Now that took a little while to explain, but it should shed some light on the sort of thinkers I am more likely to regard as insightful: those who are exploring the complicated interrelationship between beliefs, values, and cultural forms. I say “exploring” rather than “explaining,” because this isn’t, as they say, rocket science.  Rocket science is much easier, simply a matter of physics and chemistry. The study of how human beings come to assent to certain ideas, how they act on those ideas, and how they act in spite of certain ideas, is a lot more complex and mysterious.   

Another way of putting this is to observe that the way we believe shapes the way we live, and the way we live shapes the way we believe. There are no hard and fast laws here. People may live in ways that contradict their beliefs, or believe things that are inconsistent with the way they are living. But there is some relationship between the two. And since certain institutions shape the way we live more than others, they are likely to influence the way we believe as well.  

By “the way we live,” I don’t just mean the explicit ethical choices we make. I’m referring to very mundane, concrete things: whether people live in cities, in the country, or in suburbs, whether they drive to work, whether they live near extended families, whether they change jobs frequently, how much time they spend with their kids and in what circumstances, whether they bowl alone or in leagues. Many of the ways we live are encouraged by large economic, political, and technical forces, so the range of choice on such things is narrow. One could choose, for reasons of principle, not to own a car, but then the number of places you could live would be extremely limited. One could decide that living close to extended family is healthy and beneficial, but what happens when the company you work for relocates or transfers you job to the other coast?

How we believe is shaped (in some measure) by how we live, and how we live is shaped by larger institutional forces with long histories and powerful momentum (which is why our periodical, committed to understanding contemporary culture, often looks at long-term historical trends).

Christians believe that some ways of living and believing are better than others. And some of us take a rather comprehensive view of this, insisting that Christian conviction begins with what we believe and practice concerning God and sin and grace, but continues into how we understand and pursue law and education and art and farming. Some of us even believe that how we live is more than simply a matter of sustaining kindness, fidelity, and sacrifice, that in fact some forms of social organization do a better job than others at reflecting the kinds of creatures we are. So living well is not simply a matter of holding onto the right ideas and having the best intentions. Living well, under God, involves pursuing a kind of order, cultural forms that accord with the nature of nature and human nature. Truth and goodness, the rational and the volitional aspects of life, are complemented by beauty, the formal element.

So, how do I come up with ideas for features on the Journal? I’m looking for people who will help us understand specific trends and tendencies in contemporary American life, and who share with me some sense that structures and convictions are inter-related.