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This is how Mouw addresses the question of why to bother with culture when there are souls out there to be saved: "Jesus came to rescue a creation that was pervasively infected by the curse of sin—an infection not limited to the psychic territory populated by 'human hearts,' " he writes. " 'Changed hearts' will not 'change society' if the efforts at change are not also directed toward the structures and patterns of human interaction."

Not only does Mouw's analysis of Isaiah's vision give greater theological depth to what Jacobsen is talking about, but it more clearly articulates an alternative to the popular End-Times fiction of the day that imagines believers being scooped out of moving cars and whisked into the clouds. If this is our destiny, the cultural context of our current lives is mostly irrelevant. Only after reading Mouw does one come away convinced: there will be sidewalks in the coming kingdom, and we must live lives that reflect this expectation.

The city can, in fact, be a lonely place, as my wife and I have discovered upon moving to our downtown Chicago high-rise. We were eager to leave behind the provincialism of our hometown and gratify the kind of cosmopolitanism Isaiah's urban vision arouses. But we underestimated the anonymity of the city—the fact that people come here to mind their own business and hope others follow suit. It's not just SUVs and strip malls that keep people from interacting. My wife and I are usually content to enjoy a quiet evening with a rented movie behind closed doors rather than endure the din of the bars we view from our apartment window, and I wonder, how would Jacobsen judge us? Nor does Jacobsen address the equally useful question of how Christian communities, even if they have the ideal physical surroundings he calls for, can avoid becoming insular as they become intimate. But overall, Jacobsen rightly calls Christians to get serious about committing to urban issues as an element of our witness to the world.

Nathan Bierma is an editorial assistant for Books & Culture. He writes the weekly B&C weblog, Content & Context.

Copyright © 2003 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Christianity Today sister publication Books & Culture presents Books & Culture Corner and Book of the Week Mondays at ChristianityToday.com.

For further reading on urban issues, see T.J. Gorringe's A Theology of the Built Environment, Joseph Rykwert's The Seduction of Place, Blair Kamin's Why Architecture Matters, and Jonathan Franzen's essay "First City" in his collection How to Be Alone.

Earlier editions of Books & Culture Corners and Book of the Week include:

True Believers | Incoming! The McSweeney's crowd launches a new monthly. (June 2, 2003)

Facing the Past Günter | Grass and the debate over Germans as victims in World War II. (May 19, 2003)

Are Movies Fundamentally Inferior to Books? | Two responses to Ralph Wood's claim that "biblical tradition elevates word over picture." (May 12, 2003)

Buffy and the Meaning of Life | Buffy the Vampire Slayer finally gets some respect. Too bad the life is slowly ebbing out of the show. (May 5, 2003)

Bird Watching with Anne Lamott | A PBS documentary enters the unruly, grace-filled world of the author of Traveling Mercies. (April 21, 2003)

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June (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47