Cultural Engagement
The cultural crisis of the church
The church is in a state of crisis. Arguing within itself about a lot of central theological issues, due mainly to not being able to agree on how to respond to and engage with the culture around it. Where and when and over what should the church fight? It finds itself within a new world of anti-christianity intolerance and can't agree on how to respond.
Keller says that as a result of fundamentalist-modernism at the beginning of the 20th C Christians began breaking from mainstream society to begin their own schools, universities, publishing companies, television networks, radio shows etc. thus leaving the mainstream institutions in secular, liberal hands.
The aftermath of World War II was that both in Europe and in the States church attendance nose-dived. Attitudes toward moral authority shifted radically as the basic 'mood' of society altered.
Stats:
Church attendance dropped from approximately 50% of the population in 1958 to about 40% in 1969, the fastest decline ever recorded in such a short span of time.
Even more striking was the decline among people in their twenties:
in 1957, 51% of the members of that age group attended church; by 1971, that number had fallen to 28%
European cultural shift:
Francis Schaeffer commented on the attitudes of thoroughly secular Europeans:
to them the world is a mass of flying unrelated particles and they feel upon them the necessity of running away and standing still at the same time.
In the 'old world' many of the tenants of Christian belief were accepted and believed. In the 'new' world 'the gospel message [is] not simply being rejected; it [is] becoming incomprehensible and increasingly hated.'
In the 1940s a Christian minister could say to almost any young adult in the country, 'be good!' and they would know what he was talking about. By the late 1970s, if you said, 'Be good!' the answer would be, 'What's your definition of good? I might have a different one. And who are you to impose your view on me?'
What caused the shift?
Some point to the
Enlightenment philosophies; the emphasis on the individual and the belief that everything had to be proved to one's own reason.
Others point to
Romanticism which was a reaction against the emphasis placed on science and reason in the Enlightenment. It emphasises experience and feeling but is still deeply individualistic and anti-traditional.
Still others argue that it isn't so much intellectual beliefs as it is
new social realities that affected social beliefs: capitalism, air travel, television, contraception, the Internet. As innovations they have undermined traditional moral values in favour of individual choice and freedom.
The stance of pietism
The most common response among evangelical churches was to ignore culture and instead stress personal conversion and the spiritual growth of the individual. Culture simply wasn't seen as the issue that needed to be addressed: if we had more Christians in the world culture would be more just and moral - was the implicit response.
Young Christians had ministers and missionaries - not artists or business leaders - lifted before them as the ideals, not because involvement in culture was bad; it just wasn't the important thing. All were encouraged to enter full-time Christian ministry in order to evangelise the world.
Pietism derives from German-speaking central Europe in the 17thC in which the emphasis moved from doctrinal precision to spiritual experience, from clergy-led efforts to lay ministry and from efforts to reform the intellectual and social order to an emphasis on evangelistic mission and personal discipleship.
Other models that developed: The religious right (a politically motivated model that sees Christ's lordship over everything as its main motivation), The seeker church movement:
It's recommended solution was not 'church as usual' (as with those who held on to pietistic stance); nor was it 'politics with a vengeance' (as with the Religious Right). Instead, this movement spoke frequently of the church's irrelevance and sought to 'reinvent church' - principally by adapting sophisticated marketing and product development techniques from the business world - so it would appeal to secular, unchurched people.
Both of these models emphasise different attitudes to culture:
- Religious Right sought to aggressively change culture
- Seeker church movement called Christians to become relevant to it
By the late 1990s a new trend appeared known as the 'emerging church' which emphasised Leslie Newbigin's call to 'have a missionary encounter with Western culture' was lifted up.
The emerging church saw that both the RR and SM was wrong in the way it approached culture: The RR was captive to a 'naive loyalty Americanisation and free market capitalism' and the SM had 'sold out' to individualism and consumerism:
To many Christians, both groups had become captive to Western, modern, Enlightenment culture.
Emerging churches know what they 'don't' want: the cultural obliviousness of pietism, the triumphalism of the RR and the lack of reflection and dept of most seeker churches.
The Cultural Responses of the Church
The four types of response in church to the crisis in the culture:
- Transformationist model
- Relevance model
- Counterculturalist model
- Two Kingdoms model
Why use models at all in wrestling with the idea of Christ and Culture?
We can't make sense of what people do without relating them to others and noticing continuities and contrasts.
Miraslov Volf argues that there are two dangers Christians face when thinking about culture : idleness and coerciveness
The Transformationist Model:
Since the Lordship of Christ should be brought to bear on every area of life - economics and business, government and politics, literature and art, journalism and the media, science and law and education - Christians should be labouring to transform culture, to (literally) change the world.
All people working within this model hold several commonalities:
- They view 'secular' work as an important way to serve Christ and his kingdom, just as is ministry within the church. Christ saving purposes include not only individual salvation but also the renewal of the material world.
- They celebrate and assign high value to Christians who excel in their work and enter spheres of influence within business, the media, government and politics, the academy and the arts.
- They believe that the main problem is a secularism that has dishonestly demanded a 'naked public square' of beliefs while insisting that everyone in the public square does in fact hold to a belief, namely secularism.
Problems with this approach:
- It places too much emphasis on worldview as being something learnt and taught, whereas much of it has to do with a set of hopes and loves. These are not at all adopted consciously and deliberately.
- Transformationalism is often marked by 'an under appreciation for the church...' The 'real action' they imply takes place outside of the church. Much of the excitement and creative energy ends up focusing on cosmic or social redemption rather than on bringing about personal conversion through evangelism and discipleship.
- It tends to be triumphalist, self-righteous and overconfident in its ability to both understand God's will for society and bring it about.
- Transformationists have often put too much stock in politics as a way to change culture. Attitudes toward sexuality, as one example, have changed not because of legislation but because of pop culture, the arts, academic institutions. Legislation followed last of all. Politics then is 'downstream' from the true sources of cultural change. Politics helps to cement cultural changes, but it typically does not lead them.
- It doesn't recognise the dangers of power. There are numerous examples of how the church loses its vitality when Christianity and the state are too closely wedded.
The Relevance Model:
The common characteristics of those who hold this model:
- Optimism about cultural trends. They feel less need to reflect on them, exercise discernment, and respond to them in discriminating ways.
- An emphasis on the 'common good' and 'human flourishing'. They emphasise the modern church's failure to care about inequality, injustice, and suffering in the world.
- The concept of 'worldview' isn't used. It assumes, in their mind, a much greater gap between Christian truth and human culture than they think exists.
- They locate the main problem as being in the church's incomprehensibility to the minds and hearts of secular people and its irrelevance to the problems of society.
- They see little distinction between how individual Christians should act in the world and how the institutional church should function. There is a blanket call for the church to become deeply involved in the struggle for social justice.
Some of the problems with the Relevance Model may be:
- By adapting so heavily and readily to the culture, such churches are quickly seen as dated whenever the culture shifts or changes. By downplaying their doctrinal beliefs and by removing the supernatural element many of these churches look like any other social service. Causing some to ask 'why does it exist? Why do we need this institution when it is doing, often somewhat amateurishly, what so many secular institutions are doing more effectively?'
- The attitude taken by this stance toward doctrine. Of all the models, this one most often downplays the need for both theological precision and the insights of Christian tradition.
- The main energy behind churches that follow this model is often directed not toward the teaching of the gospel and seeking conversions but toward producing art, doing service projects, or seeking justice. Churches that lose their commitment and skill for vigorous evangelism will not only neglect their primary calling, but will inevitably fail to reproduce themselves. It takes new converts and changed lives for churches to truly be of service to the community. Tradition churches with their emphasis on theological training, catechesis and liturgical and ecclesiastical practices produced real character and ethical change, but this kind of spiritual formation often does not occur in the typical evangelical megachurch.
- The distinctiveness of the Christian church can begin to get blurry. Traditionally the church has been seen as the only institution that ministers the Word and the sacraments; that determines what is the true, biblical preaching of the Word; and that brings people into a community governed and disciplined by called and authorised leaders.
The Counterculturalist Model:
The church is seen as a contrast society to the world.
- Those operating in this model do not see God working redemptively through cultural movements: 'the world for all its beauty is hostile to the truth.'
- It calls the church to avoid concentrating on the culture, looking for ways to become relevant to it, reach it, or transform it. If there is a crisis at all today it is because the world has invaded the church, and consequently the church is not truly being the church.
- It criticises most other conservative evangelical churches for falling for the 'Constaninian error' of seeking to reform the world to be like the church.
- Instead of trying to change the culture the church ought to instead follow Christ 'outside the camp' and identify with the poor and marginalised. The Christian life is a life of simplicity, of material self-denial for the sake of charity, justice and community. It means decreasing geographical mobility (by committing to a local church and a neighbourhood) and social mobility (by giving away large amounts of your income to those in need).
This model has a lot of intellectual firepower behind it. Criticisms of it and problems in it would be:
- It is more pessimistic about the prospect of social change than is warranted. Wilberforce's accomplishment was a legitimate victory and a worthwhile good.
- The Counterculturalist model tends to demonise modern business markets and government. and as such they depend on the state and other powers being corrupt for their identity to hold together.
- They overlook or don't recognise the impossibility of being culturally neutral. The human culture we live in affects how we live out the Christian life and by virtue of existing we are affecting the culture around us.
- People in this model have tended to over emphasise the 'horizontal' nature of sin and donwplay the vertical aspect of it (an offence to God's holiness). Christus Victor is the atonement model of choice (Christ defeating the powers on the cross) and some Anabaptists theologians have rejected the notion of propitiation as a 'violent' theory of the atonement.
- Because it emphasises 'belonging' over 'believing' so much it isn't particularly effective or faithful in its gospel proclamation and calling individuals to repentance.
Keller in this point (1. above) also quotes the following, that I thought good enough I wanted to separate it out:
A much subtler yet powerful example is the Christianisation of Europe. Christianity permanently altered the old honour-based European cultures in which pride was valued rather than humility, dominance rather than service, courage rather than peaceableness, glory more than modesty, loyalty to one's own tribe rather than equal respect for all individuals. Even though there is some slippage in Western society back toward that pagan worldview, today's secular Europeans are still influenced far more by the Christian ethic than by the old pagan ones. And, by and large, Western societies are more humane places to live because of it. In other words Christianity transformed a pagan culture.
Commenting on church models Keller also makes the following statement:
Any element within a model that cuts off the motivation for vigorous evangelism can undermine the entire model. Without a steady stream of new converts and changed lives, the vitality and vision of the model cannot be fully realised.
The Two Kingdoms Model
Probably the least known model among evangelicals.
Based on the idea that there are two kingdoms:
- The 'common kingdom' (earthly or sometimes 'left hand' kingdom). Humans beings all live in this kingdom of God's common grace: 'believers do not try to impose biblical standard on a society but instead appeal to common understandings of the good, the true and the beautiful shared by all people. We love and serve our neighbours in this common kingdom.'
- The 'redemptive kingdom' (or righthand kingdom).
Advocates of this model believe the main problem stems from confusing these two kingdoms. The common characteristics in this kingdom are:
- High value placed on 'secular' work. All work is a way to serve God and our neighbour. Luther: taught that - all work is the way in which God does his work in the world, and therefore all work is a calling from God.
- We work in the world but do not seek to do our work in a uniquely 'christian' way. All that occurs in the temporal realm where work is done is bound to pass away. God's ruling power in the common kingdom is simply to restrain evil not 'heal' creation. Separate from transformationists and similar to counterculturists on this point.
- Two Kingdoms advocates see the state/government as being neutral, neither is it bad needing to be transformed or is it violent and wicked needing to be resisted.
- Are very guarded about how much improvement can ever be made in the natural kingdom.
There is still a range on opinions within this model particularly about how a Christian is mean to work within society.
Problems with this model:
- It gives more weight and credit to the notion of common grace than the Bible does. It also overlooks the degenerate nature of man that makes him more inclined to suppress the truth and ignore the light in favour of sin and darkness and self-obsession.
- Overlooks the significance of Biblical revelation and insight and assumes that common grace is 'enough' to arrive at many of the virtues secular society holds to. Keller points out that the idea of 'human rights' originated in the Christian idea of Imago Dei. No other societies saw all people as equal and in fact people like Aristotle taught that some people were 'born to be slaves'. With Imago Dei, these ideas changed. Points out that although Wilberforce needed common grace in his non-Christian recipients to cause them to 'resonate' with what he was saying, it was his Christian teaching that showed him the error of slavery in a way that no one else was saying or had seen.
- Implies that it is possible for human life to be conducted on a neutral basis. That isn't the case. Worldview's originate from non-provable statements of faith that aren't neutral.
- It doesn't cause Christians to want to 'stand up' and help change society.
- Contributes to too great a hierarchy between clergy and laypeople.
Keller comments that:
Our practices are unavoidably grounded in fundamental beliefs about right and wrong, human nature and destiny, the meaning of life, what is wrong with human society, and what will fix it. All of these working assumptions are based on non provable faith assumptions about human nature and spiritual reality.
Michael Sandel (from Harvard):
states that all theories of justice are 'inescapably judgmental'. You cannot hold a position on financial bailouts, surrogate motherhood, same-sex marriage, affirmative action, or CEO pay without assuming some underlying beliefs about 'the right way to value things.' For example when one person says women should have the right to choose an abortion while another says women shouldn't have that choice, each is valuing things differently - a valuation based on moral beliefs that are no scientifically based.
Reflecting on these realities Keller says:
While the New testament may not give believers direct calls to transform society, the gospel faith of Christians clearly had immediate and far-reaching impact on social and economic relationships, and not only strictly within the church.
Keller finishes the chapter with some examples from proponents of transformationist and 2 kingdoms, showing that they are moving towards one another by recognising the blind spots within their models.
Why all models are right... and wrong
What is the real issue? The trouble is that every model has rightly identified a real need and yet focusing on and addressing that need, often leads to the exclusion of or oversight of other 'needs' within the church that are then rightly identified by the other models. Keller suggest two questions about culture to help carve a way forward together:
1) Should we be pessimistic or optimistic about the possibility for cultural change?
2) Is the current culture redeemable and good, or fundamentally fallen?
Our answers to these questions reveal our alignments with biblical emphases as well as our imbalances.
On 1 he says:
This complex and rich understanding of cultural change throws a new light on each model. Each model has a tendency, especially among some of its more strident proponents, to be either
too optimistic or
too pessimistic about culture change. And within the groups that tend toward optimism, they tend to be too limited in their understanding of how culture can be changed. Some see the importance of arguing for truth claims, while others put more emphasis on the importance of communities and of historical processes - but any one of these can be the crucial factor in a culture shift. All of them can play a part and none of the current models give equal or adequate weight to them all.
How the various chapters of gospel shed light on our attitudes to culture:
Creation:
The material world is important. Unlike other ancient creation accounts and religions, Christianity enforces a 'saw that it was good' attitude on us toward the created world. If God is actively involved in the created world and if he both cultivates creation
and saves souls with his truth - how can one say that an artist or banker is engaged in 'secular' work and that only professional ministers are doing 'the Lord's work'?
Adam and Eve are called to be fruitful, multiply and have dominion:
A gardener does not merely leave a plot of ground as it is but rearranges the raw material so it produces things necessary for human flourishing, whether food, other materials for goods, or simply beautiful foliage. Ultimately all human work and cultural activity represent this kind of gardening.
Fall:
Sin infects and affects every part of life. Schaeffer comments:
We should be looking now, on the basis of the work of Christ, for substantial healing in every area affected by the fall... Man was divided from God, first; and then, ever since the fall, man is separated from himself. These are the psychological divisions... The next division is that man is divided from other men; these are the sociological divisions. And then man is divided from nature, and nature is divided from nature... One day, when Christ comes back, there is going to be a complete healing of all of them.
The Bible presents us as both cursed and yet preserved by non-salvific grace. The battle line between God and idols not only runs through the world; it runs through the heart of every believer.
Cultural products should not be judged as 'good if Christians make them' and 'bad if non-Christians make them.' Each should be evaluated on its own merit as to whether it serves God or an idol.
Redemption and restoration:
Isaac Watts: 'He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.'
Grace does not do away with thinking and speaking, art and science, theatre and literature, business and economics; it remakes and restores what is amiss.
The kingdom of God is both now and not yet. Geerhardus Vos puts it well in
The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God and the Church:
The Kingdom of God means the renewal of the world through the introduction of supernatural forces.
He states that the kingdom of God is:
1) the main way to see the kingdom forces of God at work is in the institutional church, whose main job is to minister through the Word and sacrament to win people and disciple them in Christ.
2) when Christians are living in society to God's glory, this, too is a manifestation of the kingdom of God.
We need this balance to stop it becoming purely a spiritual reality operating only in the church or mainly a social one operating in the liberation movements out in the world.
The landscape of Christian cultural engagement
What do we learn from this brief survey?
Balance. The word balance is thrust at us again.
There is then presented a great illustration picturing the various church streams against the others for where they emphasise cultural engagement / non engagement and common grace in society vs no common grace in society.
