SCCA lecture series addresses art, culture

Banquet speaker encourages redemptive arts

“There can be no cultural change without a change in narrative.”

Dr. Colin Harbinson spoke these words Thursday, Feb. 5, during his speech for the 11th annual Ann Wharton Lecture series banquet. More than 300 Liberty University students and faculty filled the Club Level of the Williams Stadium to hear Harbinson’s message about the impact of narrative on culture.

LIVING ART — Colin Harbinson focused on the power of narrative. Photo provided

LIVING ART — Colin Harbinson focused on the power of narrative. Photo provided

The banquet, which was organized by the School of Communication & Creative Arts (SCCA) and co-sponsored by the Center for Apologetics and Cultural Engagement, started with a blessing from Dr. Cecil V. Kramer. Once guests were finished getting food from the buffet, LU Praise sang for the guests.

Following the performance, which was met with applause from the audience, Dean of SCCA Norman Mintle introduced the main speaker of the night, Dr. Colin Harbinson, whose message primarily revolved around the role of narrative and the arts in cultural change and redemption.

Harbinson recalled a time when missionary friends of his traveled to Papua New Guinea and discovered that a stone-age tribe, which is the one of the few tribes to speak the Duna language, separated the males and the females because of a story that claimed that an evil spirit possessed all women. When Harbinson’s friends shared the story of Genesis with the tribe, they were puzzled by the verse in which God said husbands should cleave to their wives.

“(The tribe wondered) if God’s story and narrative was true — what did that mean for their narrative about women and how they perceive life together?” Harbinson said. “The Duna had a new narrative, a new story, but they wanted to take baby steps. So they picked the Christian family and (in one hut) put the man in one side and the women and the children in the other. They were still separated, but they lived for the first time under one roof.”

According to Harbinson, the tribe would inspect the man so that if he showed any negative signs, they would get him away from the woman quickly. While this story drew some laughter from the audience, it illustrated Harbinson’s point that stories have a large impact on culture.

“Narratives drive culture,” Harbinson said. “We’ve talked about the importance of stories, how we need the stories to have compelling characters that we care about, but it goes much, much deeper than this. It goes to the heart of a culture and how cultural change takes place.”

Harbinson then spoke of the importance of redeeming culture and how skeptics are wrong in assuming that redeeming culture is not biblical.

“The world that we live in is an abnormal world,” Harbinson said. “It is not how God intended it. It is distorted. All distortion, all personal distortion, all cultural distortion is rooted in lies.”

Harbinson stated his belief that cultures reflect something of God’s original intention, but that intention has been distorted. In a booklet that had passed out to the guests, Harbinson wrote in order to restore the culture, Christians need to celebrate the natural, affirm the redemptive, oppose the demonic and restore the distorted in the arts.

“My prayer is that Liberty artists, encouraged and empowered by their faculty, will be those who go into the brokenness of our culture and bring new understanding, another reality, a contrasting story that people who are fed up with the one they are living in will embrace,” Harbinson said.

JANNEY is the asst. news editor.

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