S12 E02: A Social Imaginary with Karen Swallow Prior
What role does the imagination play in shaping the identity of a culture?
Our collective imagination provides metaphors, stories and symbols that bind people groups together and create a common understanding of the world.
But what happens when those metaphors no longer carry the same meanings? Or even worse, when those stories and metaphors no longer create unity but bring division and harm?
Professor and writer Karen Swallow Prior addresses these concerns in her book The Evangelical Imagination.
She tells us, contemporary American evangelicalism is suffering from an identity crisis - and a lot of bad press.
In this episode, Karen discusses what Charles Taylor called ‘A social imaginary’ and how artists and creatives can respond to the evangelical crisis of identity and bring healing to our cultural fractures.