Culture Happens

In my previous blog, I talked about "creating culture." That probably sounds a bit strange to most people. After all, one might say, isn't culture simply a given? Something that simply happens? How does one "create culture?"

Good question. Perhaps it might be helpful to first look at the word "culture" itself. The

English word is derived from the French culture, which in turn is derived from the Latin cultura, which is the past participial form of colere, which referred to the practice of tilling the soil. The American Heritage Dictionary traces the etymology to the (putative) Indo-European root kwel- and the related form kwel-, which means "to revolve, move around, sojourn, dwell."  A cluster of words derived from this root that include colony, cult, wheel, cyclone, cycle, pulley, cultivate, culture and bucolic.

From this, it is interesting to notice the close association between tilling the ground, dwelling or sojourning, and cyclicity.  When one considers how many of the early human societies migrated from place to place according to the cycle of the seasons, and how the settled life of farming still was dependent upon the seasonal round, the close association of these words and their derivation from a common source is instructive.

All these definitions and their etymologies indicate the linguistic relationships between farming the land and the development of human societies.  Hence, when we maintain the connections between all the various meanings of the words clustered around the Latin root colo- we discover that we can think of culture as involving the association of humans with one another, the ordering of that association into specific patterns of behavior and sets of relationships, that activities and forms of worship and devotion will be developed, and that these relationships and associations will be embedded in a complex set of relationships with the land and natural world.  

In this sense, culture is definitely created by humans. If you want to to be clever about it, you can say that humans cultivate culture. Or, perhaps better, culture is the product of what human societies cultivate by virtue of our (creative) life together. In other words, humans are innately creative, and when they get together, culture is what results. 

I have found it most helpful to conceive of culture as consisting of the interaction of (at least) four main arenas of human action: 

• natural/environmental, 
• spiritual/value-oriented, 
• social/organizational, 
• and aesthetic/expressive. 

The natural/environmental arena comprises all aspects of the human species’ interaction with the rest of the natural world, including gardening, farming, ranching, fishing, hunting, recreation, hiking, camping, air and water quality control, raising of pets or animal companions, and any other such endeavors. 

The spiritual/value-oriented arena comprises the values shared in common by all persons within the culture as well as values particular to subgroups within the larger society. Ideas and philosophies concerning the nature of things, worldviews, ethics and morality belong in this realm, as do specific spiritual and religious values and practices. 

The social/organizational realm comprises the formal and informal organization and patterns of behavior, means of redress, adjudication of disputes, expressions of ideal modes of relating, as well as the various means of preserving and passing on knowledge and social values.  

The aesthetic/expressive arena comprises the various expressive arts such as writing, poetry, music, dance, theatre and the various forms of media, as well as the decorative arts, handcrafts and the embellishment and design of living and work spaces, utensils, clothing and means of transportation. 


Culture emerges in the overlap and interaction of these basic arenas. Looked at this way, we can begin to understand how we create culture, because each of these areas are comprised of the purposeful actions of people. Religion is highly significant in the creation of culture precisely because it is all about defining and describing what it means to have a purpose in life, and how to pursue the fulfillment of that purpose. 

Therefore, when I suggest that it is time for communities of faith to consider their task to be the creation of culture rather than the preservation of institutions, it is based in this understanding of the vital part religion, faith, and spirituality play in the construction, cultivation, or creation (call it what you want) of the human worlds we live in, and which shape and form us so deeply and completely. Culture is not something that happens to us. Culture is what happens because of us.