Church as Culture

The Church's Particularity

2009-05-05T15:54:00.000-07:00

“Each church…reflects a distinctive culture or cultures…Regardless of its relationship to the prevailing culture around it, a given church is itself a cultural community with its own language, spoken or unspoken rules of conduct, expectations, and the like. While it is possible to discern authentic and inauthentic expressions of the gospel and church in a given culture, it is impossible to separate the gospel and the church from culture….As Newbigin sees it, ‘The idea that one can or could at any time separate out by some process of distillation a pure gospel unadulterated by any cultural accretions is an illusion’” (Exploring Ecclesiology, by Harper and Metzger, p. 275).

The Western, White Cultural Captivity of the Church

2009-05-02T14:35:00.000-07:00

Soong-Chan Rah has written an important book, The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity. It has an edge; it is a bit redundant, but it is an important book. If you are interested in the church and its cultural instantiation, this is a must read. Part of what it reveals is how far behind many of us (read "white cultural Christians") are with regard to the whole question of "race" and diversity, especially as it is impacting the church. Perhaps growing up in Asia and then working with the church there for so many years has biased my view. But I felt embarrased as I read this work: embarrased at our own cultural blindness. May the Lord use this volume to help open our eyes.

Niebuhr, Carter, Carson...

2008-06-03T06:10:00.000-07:00

There has been a healthy dose of discussion concerning the relationship of the Church to culture, especially in a "revisiting" of Richard Niebuhr's categories. Hidden here and there, but rarely emphasized, is the motif of the "Church as culture." If we construct the character of our lives by group living (Tanner), then does not the community of faith construct a culture? Of course, this needs to be defined, nuanced, biblically shaped and theologically informed. But something important needs to be said here. I hope to carry out this conversation here (largely for my own benefit), but help along the way is more than welcome.

In a sense, the following quote, taken from the Gospel Coalition's doctrinal statement point the direction, I want to go:

"The church serves as a sign of God’s future new world when its members live for the service of one another and their neighbors, rather than for self-focus."

What Role Does the Church Have in Politics?

2008-06-26T15:48:00.001-07:00

An interesting book, Debating the Divine, on the role of religion in American politics is now available in pdf format from American Progress.

Here are the contents:

Introduction

Debating the Divine, by Sally Steenland (pdf)

About the Authors (pdf)

Opening Essays

Civic Patriotism and the Critical Discussion of Religious Ideas, by David A. Hollinger (pdf)

Religious Pluralism in the Public Square, by Eboo Patel (pdf)

Responding Essays

The Two Cultures?, by Mark Lilla (pdf)

Religion in the Public Square, by Nicholas Wolterstorff (pdf)

Religions and Public Life: Problems of Translation, by Martha Minow (pdf)

Wisdom, Not Prescription: One Size Does Not Fit All, by Mark A. Noll (pdf)

Nobody Gets a Pass: Faith in Reason and Religious Pluralism Are Equally Questionable, by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite (pdf)

Clothes Encounters in the Naked Public Square, by T. Jeremy Gunn (pdf)

America’s Tower of Religious Babble Is Already Too High, by Susan Jacoby (pdf)

Religion and Community Organizing: Prophetic Religion and Social Justice Offer Avenues to a New Democratic Pluralism, by Charlene K. Sinclair (pdf)

The Rules of Engagement: How the American Tradition of Religious Freedom Helps Define Religion’s Role in Civic Debate, by Melissa Rogers (pdf)

Globalization, the End of Easy Consensus, and Beginning the Real Work of Pluralism, by Vincent J. Miller (pdf)

Liberals and Religion, by Alan Wolfe (pdf)

Closing Essays

Patterns of Engagement and Evasion, by David A. Hollinger (pdf)

The Promise of Religious Pluralism by Eboo Patel, (pdf)

Policymaker Response

Transforming the Religious–Secular Divide to Work for the Common Good, by John D. Podesta and Shaun Casey (pdf)

The Conservative Response in Anglicanism

2008-06-21T08:33:00.001-07:00

An interesting meeting will take place starting tomorrow within the more conservative wing of the Anglican Church; the gathering is called GAFCON, the Global Anglican Futures conference. "Many conservatives pulled out of Lambeth (the gathering of Anglican bishops every ten years) in the ongoing dispute over homosexual ordination and same-sex blessings." Peter Jensen, who heads up the conference, suggests that GAFCON could turn into a movement "with sufficient institutional reality to make it a new force within the Anglican Communion." Again, the question is raised, what does it mean to be the Church today? What kind of corporate life do we construct together? What does the Church "as culture" look like?

An Apocalyptic Assessment from the Right

2008-06-15T03:45:00.001-07:00

Dr. Richard Land, president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, believes there are four “modern horsemen of the apocalypse” that are “riding forth to wreak havoc and destruction in our society” – the denial of the sanctity of human life, the rise of hardcore Internet pornography, the radical homosexual agenda and its attempt to undermine marriage and radical Islamic jihadism.

Might 40% of "Evangelicals" Vote for Senator Obama?

2008-06-08T17:44:00.001-07:00

According to an article in The Christian Post 30-40% of "evangelicals" may vote for Senator Obama for president this November. The article states:

"The fascination with the charismatic Illinois senator combined with evangelicals’ effort to not be seen as an appendage of the Republican Party could swing evangelical voters in Obama’s favor, predicted Mark DeMoss – a prominent public relations executive whose clients include Focus on the Family, Franklin Graham, and Campus Crusade for Christ –to Beliefnet.com."

“I will not be surprised if he gets one third of the evangelical vote,” DeMoss said in the interview. “I wouldn’t besurprised if it was 40 percent.”

Envision: Gospel, Politics, & the Future (June 8-10)

2008-06-07T08:31:00.001-07:00

An important conference is being held over the next few days at Princeton University: Envision 08. The "evangelical left" is actively engaged in this project, along with others. A file is provided to explain the conference's purpose and structure. A preliminary consultation has already taken place on line (June 2-3), resulting in two documents. The questions discussed in the preparatory dialog included the following:

What are the values that ground your faith commitment to a common good?
What in our world today violates these values?
What can Christians do together to address these problems

The list of speaks and sponsors reveals the breadth of this consultation. On Wednesday, June 11, a panel of scholars and religious leaders will work on a vision statement to guide future Envision conferences.

While those in the evangelical center and on the evangelical right may not agree at various levels, the discussions are important for everyone who identifies with the Church, and its cultural instantiation in America.

Who Disturbs the Peace?

2008-06-04T16:20:00.001-07:00

There is an interesting article by Fleming Rutledge at ChristianityToday.com, entitled, "When God Disturbs the Peace."

Rutledge accurately diagnosis the problem with the old liberal theology: "The divide between the liberal, revisionist project and the apostolic, biblical faith is not characterized primarily by the distinction between the individual and the social. The liberal-orthodox gap is most acute when we talk of "the power of God." The biblical proclamation ofthe triune Creator God who, when his good creation rebels, recaptures it from an occupying Enemy through the invasion of his Son, is not the central operating system for liberal theology. The belief that an "experiential," humanistic perspective on the Christian story is more accessible and appealing is proving not to be the case; several decades of this thin gruel have left us without any transcendent dimension to draw upon, either for social action or for individual regeneration."

But she is also right to point to the evangelical church's tendency to be anemic in its understanding of the community of God's people as a divinely ordained force for change:

"The emphasis on the individual's redemption is deeply embedded in our culture, and has been set over against communal understanding in a way that suggests the two views are mutually exclusive. In the mainline churches, social action has edged out evangelism and spiritual
vitality; in evangelical churches, there is ignorance and confusion about what social action actually is."

She concludes with this challenge: "A new social-action hero like William Wilberforce would indeed bring honor to God. But it may be that God will use numbers of more ordinary Christians, banding together to bring down more fortresses of the Enemy—racial injustice, poverty, pollution, inferior education, sex trafficking, inadequate health care, prison recidivism, political
corruption, and yes, terrorism—but without terror on our part, for this would truly be to doubt the cruciform power of God, who in his Son has already undone the Enemy once and for all."

The Evangelical Church and American Politics

2008-06-04T07:43:00.001-07:00

David Gushee's new book, The Future of Faith in American Politics: the Public Witness of the Evangelical Center (whether one agrees with his conclusions or not) helps to orient the conversation about the Church and its role in the political public square. As the varied streams of Islam wrestle with their relationship with democracy and politics in the modern world, so the Church must revisit its founding documents and its moral vision. We MUST ask what it means to be the Church in the world today (and concretely what this means in the American context in 2008). We must not assume we have already asked the right questions, and arrived at the faithful answers.

Gushee is right on this point: the failures (whatever they might be) of our engagement in American politics can be largely traced to "the weak ecclesiology of evangelical Christianity."

"The ultimate source of our problem may be our misunderstanding (and malpractice) of what it means to be Christ's church" (p. 54).