Sesame Street & Contextualization
Some time ago, Ryan and I Netflixed the documentary The World According to Sesame Street. When I opened the red and white envelope and saw the title, I assumed that my (then) soon-to-be-husband, knowing my love of all things Muppets, picked out some impossibly cute children’s programming that would surely take my mind off of impending finals and wedding planning.
Instead, what he got was a documentary following how Sesame Street translates into different countries and continents.
Unlike much of American television, which is syndicated, dubbed, and shipped overseas, Sesame Street reflects the culture in which it’s broadcast. The “fundamentals” are the same-muppets and human beings co-habitate peacefully in a neighborhood, reading, spelling, and celebrating numbers while teaching and learning lessons of mutual respect and understanding. Sesame Street is no urban utopia, but does offer a model of what can truly occur when community is a truth recognized.
For example, in Mexico, Sesame Street is called “Plaza Sesamo.” Instead of our familiar Big Bird, the 6-foot high yellow bird, the resident avian is a quetzal-a colorful bird featured prominently in Aztec folklore. Some segments from the American Sesame Street are translated into Spanish, but generally, the show produces its own unique content.
In South Africa, where the AIDS crisis is the blight of a generation, the show features a muppet who is HIV-positive. Our own American context, so sanitized that even our pencils contain anti-microbial material, may find such a character appalling and indeed, when news broke of this unique puppet, many Christian conservatives objected loudly. However, in a country where most children have been directly affected by HIV/AIDS, it is appropriate to feature a muppet who represents a societal norm.
Examples of the contextualizations of Sesame Street could fill several blog posts. Sesame Street is seen in over 140 countries around the world, ranging from Indonesia to Russia to France and everywhere in between.
I wonder, then, in a world where the North American church struggles to be “relevant” in today’s society, what it would look like if we were to take a cue from Sesame Street and focus on the contextualization of our worshipping communities?
What would happen if local churches quit trying to be “something they’re not” and instead, embraced their unique ideological worldview?
Among the numerous lessons taught by Big Bird and Co., Sesame Street has shown that it is possible to stay true to a set-format while adapting that format to fit the needs of a specific context. Although, in the past I have critiqued the Emerging Church, contextualization seems to be one area in which the movement excels.
So how shall we model ourselves after Sesame Street?
- Make worship understandable and accessible in a way that makes sense to its community.
- …but that doesn’t mean “dumbing down”-Sesame Street continues to teach letters and numbers, knowing that education is achieved through repetition
- Structure a worshiping community that is responsive to the needs of its immediate context. In other words, if your neighbors are shoeless, don’t give them bananas. Take care of the pressing needs first; worries about bananas later.
- Use a language that is easily comprehended. Explain words and concepts foreign to the local vernacular. Translate as necessary.
- View tradition through the lens of the present. While the content of Sesame Street has changed, the tradition-the basic format-has not.
- Celebrate personal cultural identity while celebrating the cultural identity of others.
…and you thought all Sesame Street taught was letters and numbers!
Comment by Carol Howard Merritt on 31 October 2008:
Dang. Even with the anti-microbial pencils, we could use that HIV/AIDS puppet in D.C….
Thanks for the thoughts, Mere. I love the fact that you speak of contextualizing our worship and our outreach. Too often, I think we imagine worship and meeting pressing needs as two separate things. You know, we gather to do one on Sunday morning, and we write a check so someone else can do the other one on Monday morning.
Comment by Leon Bloder on 31 October 2008:
I love this.
I remember the first church I served as a pastor was “coming down” from the whole Purpose Driven Church thing—basically realizing that the template format for “success” was not working for them. I’d always instinctively avoided those kinds of fads, but didn’t know why until then. Context is so important. If a community of faith can’t embrace their context, and live out the hope of serving a risen Christ within that context—there’s a good chance such a community will not survive.
Nice article
Comment by Cobus on 31 October 2008:
From South Africa: What’s more, in a context where AIDS is a no-go topic, having a muppet who actually speak about AIDS it has is important!
Comment by Todd Albertson on 31 October 2008:
Interesting thoughts! I think your heart is in the right place, but I’m afraid your application is off.
It would seem that people aren’t this dumb that they need to be treated like a child and taught via Sesame Street principles. That is part of the problem we in society today is that everything is dumbed down and reduced to a sound-bite. A better way to represent Christ to the nations would be to actual teach like Christ did: teach the Gospel, be transparent and genuine, and be respectful. If you are talking to farmers in China it is common sense to use illustrations that they are aware of rather than telling them about raves in LA.
Comment by Carol Howard Merritt on 1 November 2008:
Todd,
I don’t want to speak for Mere, but I thought she was very clear in saying “but that doesn’t mean ‘dumbing down.’” She’s not advocating that people be treated like children, she’s pointing out contextualization–an important part of reaching people of all ages.
Comment by ryan kemp-pappan on 1 November 2008:
I want to agree with Todd,”That is part of the problem we in society today is that everything is dumbed down and reduced to a sound-bite.” I also agree that Jesus taught us to be transparent and genuine, and respectful.” Jesus also listened to others and meet them where they were at. Which is the focus of this piece, context matters. In order to gain the context one must invest in the the other via relationship. In my humble opinion this is the biggest problem facing the church today, we seek to do church and transform lives absent of the long invested effort to form relationships for the sake of relationship [you can also read community]. Context matters. Dumbing down often looks like context when one is not invested with the other.
Pingback by The World According to Sesame Street « The Pinkhammer on 1 November 2008:
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Comment by Meredith on 1 November 2008:
First of all–thanks for all the comments! It seems this post has generated lots of conversations.
Todd- I agree whole-heartedly that there is a danger in reducing our theology and liturgy to “sound bites.” That’s precisely why so-called Christian bumper-stickers and t-shirts with a clever slogan are a personal pet-peeve. But that’s another post for another time…
I am merely pointing to Sesame Street not so much as a pedagogical model but rather, as a model of cultural contextualization. What would it look like if our worshiping communities began to embrace their unique worldviews? What would happen if congregations celebrated their gifts and lived contextually, focusing on the needs of their community?
Comment by Todd Albertson on 1 November 2008:
Meredith, I like Sesame Street!
I understand how you are trying to apply those principles as a model for Biblical Contextualization. I am glad that you dislike “sounds bites” as much as I do! I don’t want to imply that I am in any way disagreeing with your intent: I think your heart is in the right place. I just think your application is flawed as I see the Sesame Street model as a method for product localization rather than Biblical Contextualization.
The difference, in my opinion, is that localization tries to make something more familiar to a community. Localization “dumbs things down” and is often used by marketers to sell their product in a different market. For example, ABC is running a TV show called “Life on Mars.” The BBC originally did this a few years earlier. ABC choose to remake the show set in America with American English spoken because they felt England and British English wouldn’t sell well to American audiences.
Contextualization on the other hand, translates in relation to the communities’ relevant cultural settings. For example, Jesus told stories that his contemporary Jews would have understood because they were taken from their day-to-day lives and culture. In a 21st century Western church, we need the Bible contextualized to our time and culture in order to properly understand what the authors of the Bible intended to communicate to the reader.
There are literally tens if not hundreds of thousands of examples where the Church attempted to NOT contextualize the Gospel for diverse communities. These attempts were utter failures at best and often times harmful to indigenous populations or communities at worst. One of the better examples of good Biblical Contextualization in recent history came from Hudson Taylor. He “became” Chinese so as to share Christ with the Chinese. And he did it quite effectively!
These differences are black & white in a historical missiological setting: the worldview in 19th Century China and 19th Century England are easy to contrast because they were so different. Worldview became greyer in the modern era because traditional worldviews have become blurry due to the influences of mass culture, immigration, media, travel, and increased internationalization of societies.
A Korean Presbyterian church in LA should have a different worship style than a Southern Baptist church in Nashville. For the Gospel to be meaningful, congregations need to take “ownership” of the material and present it in a manner that it is culturally relevant to its congregants. This is, I believe, a correct use of Biblical Contextualization.
My concern with your Sesame Street model is that I’ve seen it applied erroneously in the past. For example, I’ve seen churches in Korea take parts of the Gospel and incorporate that with Buddhist concepts of reincarnation and Confucian principles of “right relationship” and create a localized church that is teaching a gospel that isn’t the Gospel. I have also seen it applied in the US where “church” is dumb downed to be very market friendly, but something other than a Biblical institution.
Thanks for raising this discussion. I’m sure we all have thoughts and could write books on any of these subjects. No one - at least no one who is sincere in wanting to reach the nations or their community with Christ’s love - wants the Gospel message to be misunderstood. I am all for Biblical Contextualization. I don’t like Biblical Localization!
Comment by Bob Pearson on 2 November 2008:
So why does it have to be Biblical C15n or Biblical L11n at all?
What about faith, or belief, or Kingdom, or Spiritual C15n or L11n?
In Phyllis Tickel’s new book the question of authority comes up and if you have not read the book I highly recommend it. She posits that the Sola Scriptura of the Reformation is now under revision in the post modern context.
Can we have C15n or L11n that does not have to go back to a contextual document in the first place and get on with bringing community together to live out the life lived and taught by Jesus. Right belief is not the Kingdom of God, never was never will be. Kingdom of God is living. Living C15n is what the emerging church is all about. We need to offer a new C15n for the US (since we are the PCUSA after all) just as if it was a foreign country, because as it relates to the Kingdom of God it is clearly a foreign culture.
Comment by Wendy Bailey on 3 November 2008:
I think I get what Todd is saying … we need to be clear that what we’re talking about is contextualization of the Gospel and not adaptation of the Gospel.
Hmmm … I think so much of the struggle here has to do with really understanding the depth and breadth of the Gospel. One of the values of multi-cultural church (I was sharing this with a congregation looking at welcoming 50+ members from Ghana) is that we begin to learn which pieces of our heritage are contextual and which are Gospel. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish. In the same way, we need to put the good news into the vernacular … that’s not only the language, but the images, music, and stories, of the people.
Comment by Craig Williams on 20 November 2008:
Bob, I’ve not read Phyllis’s book. Terry Eagleton (brit phd), who is one of the framers of post-modernity and literature, suggests that the post-post modern movement will embrace texts. That texts will stand on their own and be judged by their own merits. I think what this means is that authority will actually be attributed to texts and they will have the ability to speak truth to culture. They’ll measured against one another. This is an interesting development from a secular source. It means for us that we need to preserve the text. Maybe not in the ways of the past but be ready to put it up alongside other texts of the world and let it stand. Lesslie Newbigin’s little book “A Walk Through the Bible” underscores the unique power of the biblical narrative in a world of religious pluralism and I think the point is made by a Hindu. Maybe I’m missing the conversation here. But Eagleton would be worth a read as we move along in trying to understand the place of scripture in a post-post modern dialogue.