Category Archives: culture

Was yesterday better?

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On Friday, Steve Teel made a comment on Thursday’s post, an insightful thought that doesn’t deserve to languish in the comment section. Steve is a former missionary to Argentina who now preaches for the Hendersonville Church of Christ in North Carolina.

Steve said:

Tim, what do you suppose would be the snap shoot, or the bullet points on the North American Christian movement 50 years ago? 1961?
1. Racism prevades the Christian church. A number of “Christians” participated in a recent lynching in South Carolina (actually happened), and vowed that the KKK was founded on Biblical principles.
2. Christian colleges are staunch on their segragation policies, “after all there are Black schools for them to attend.”
3. Despite the growing number of studies against smoking, a majority of Christian men smoke at least two packs a week.
4. In the churches of Christ, large numbers of churches are taking a stand against orphan homes. Outsiders see it as a power play, though long public debates defend the split on doctrinal reasons.
5. Spousal abuse remains a closet topic among Christians. A new study, however, indicates that beating a wife falls within the range bringing her into subjection as dictated in Ephesians 5.

That’s a great reminder. It’s easy to look at the church today and say, “Oh, things are getting so bad.” However, if we look objectively, each era has its own problems. It’s not that we have challenges today whereas there were none in other times. We have different challenges today.

Any thoughts? Would you add to Steve’s analysis of the church in 1961? Any thoughts about the implications of the fact that each generation faces a different set of challenges?

“Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.” (Ecclesiastes 7:10)

The World is Changing — Part 1 of The Next Christians

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I’m going to be spending some time over the next few days looking at the book The Next Christians by Gabe Lyons.

In the first part of the book, Lyons describes the changing nature of Western culture, especially as religion is concerned. He describes the traditional religious landscape by breaking it down into two large categories, what he calls “separatist” and “cultural.”

Within the category of separatist, Lyons includes the following groups:

  • Insiders: Christians who focus their interactions on other Christians by using Christian lawyers, Christian bankers, sending their kids to Christian schools, listening to Christian radio, etc.
  • Culture Warriors: These Christians focus on “taking back our country.” They fight for prayer in schools and organize against gay rights and abortion. If you disagree with them, they will label you as unpatriotic or ungodly.
  • Evangelizers: For these Christians, the only legitimate activity for Christians in this world is recruiting others to the faith. They want to win souls, no matter who they offend.

Within the category of “cultural,” Lyons includes these groups:

  • Blenders: Accepting historic Christian beliefs, these Christians seek to blend into the cultural mainstream. Their lives mirror the culture around them.
  • Philanthropists: For these Christians, the only Christian activity that matters is helping others. They lack the message of the gospel from which these works should spring.

Lyons sees “The Next Christians” as following into another category: Restorers. (Yes, those of us in the Restoration Movement find a bit of irony in the use of that title) Lyons calls them restorers because they are actively seeking to restore the world to what it once was. He’ll spend the rest of the book fleshing out what that looks like.

Any reaction so far? I see a lot of similarity to James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World, which we examined in several posts earlier.

(Disclaimer: The links to books in this review link to my Amazon Associates account and I will receive a small commission should you purchase via this link)

Some reaction to Hunter’s book

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I may do a more organized analysis. Let me offer up some initial thoughts right now:

  • Despite Hunter’s protests to the contrary, if an outsider were evaluating Hunter’s views, 9 times out of 10 he would be placed in the neo-Anabaptist camp. Where he sets himself apart from some neo-Anabaptist writers is in his offering of positive constructs for living (the discussion of “faithful presence”). However, there are others who have expressed similar views; Hunter can differentiate himself from some of the extreme writers in that camp, but sounds a lot like the more moderate ones. [By the way, I hate using terms like neo-Anabaptist. But I’ll stick with Hunter’s terms.]
  • As I’ve become increasingly convicted of our need to view ourselves as strangers and aliens, I find Hunter’s use of Jeremiah 29 to be highly appropriate. I fear that too many Christians want to try and turn Babylon into Jerusalem, instead of recognizing that we are living in exile. I prefer more of an emphasis on our role as ambassadors, yet I think Hunter’s teachings move in the right direction.
  • I’ll save some of the discussion about politics for later posts. I’m sorry more people didn’t join the interesting discussion Todd and I had over Christians and politics (back on Essay 2, Chapter 6), but this series has apparently numbed the brains of all who glanced at it.
  • I should make a comment on that fact, the total lack of discussion on this series. While I think more people read than commented, I also recognize what I stated in the very beginning: this was a selfish series. I needed to go back through Hunter’s book and analyze the ideas. The best way I knew to do that was to make myself blog it chapter by chapter. For many, it was far from interesting. That’s ok. It served the purpose for me. I’ll be incorporating some of these thoughts into a seminar I’m doing next week on “Christ and Culture.”

Maybe those of you who have somehow read this far in the series will have some thoughts to add. If not, we’ll probably look at some other ideas over the next few weeks.

Essay 3, Chapter 6: Toward a New City Commons

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The final chapter in James Davison Hunter’s To Change The World is entitled “Toward a New City Commons.” The abstract of this chapter, from Hunter’s website, reads as follows:

Christians are to maintain their distinctiveness as a community in a manner that serves the common good. A theology of faithful presence calls Christians to enact the shalom of God in the circumstances in which God has placed them. In Jeremiah 29, the Israelites were called to practice shalom when God commanded them to pray for the welfare of their Babylonian captors. The enactments of shalom need to extend into the institutions of which all Christians are a part and, as they are able, into the formation of new institutions within every sphere of life. The church will not flourish in itself nor serve well the common good if it isolates itself from the larger culture, fails to understand its nature and inner logic, and is incapable of working within it—critically affirming and strengthening its healthy qualities and humbly criticizing and subverting its most destructive tendencies.

http://jamesdavisonhunter.com/to-change-the-world/chapter-abstracts/

This chapter alone is worth the price of admission. If you can’t afford to buy the book, go find it in a bookstore, then read the last chapter. It contains a summary of the rest of the book and makes Hunter’s final arguments. His suggestions of how to apply his theology are based around Jeremiah 29, where God is telling the captives in Babylon that they must make the best of their time in Babylon (meaning that their return to Jerusalem would not be very soon). As Hunter describes it, “He was calling them to maintain their distinctiveness as a community but in ways that served the common good.” (p. 278) I fully agree with his application of this passage to a church living in exile, finding a way to faithfully live in Babylon. (Too many people seem to want to view the church as living in Jerusalem)

As the church waits for the restoration of Jerusalem (New Jerusalem, that will descend from heaven, not the one that men squabble over today), Hunter says that the church must live with and even cultivate certain tensions:

  • With itself. This is the tension between wanting to do good and wanting to use the world’s methods to achieve that good. Hunter says that the church must abandon the old vocabulary for culture engagement: redeem the culture, advance the kingdom, build the kingdom, transform the world, reclaim the culture, reform the culture, change the world, etc. This is the language of conquest and domination, not the language of Jesus’ way of influencing the world. Instead of “winning the culture wars,” Christians need to learn to live in exile in a post-Christian culture. They must reject the desire for domination and the politicization of everything. Hunter says that “it may be that the healthiest course of action for Christians, on this count, is to be silent for a season and learn how to enact their faith in public through acts of shalom rather than to try again to represent it publicly through law, policy and political mobilization.”
  • With the world. The church must affirm the good in culture and withdraw from that that is evil. The church must affirm the central role of the local church and emphasize the task of spiritual formation.

In the end, the church must see that our task is not to change the world. Hunter states, “To be sure, Christianity is not, first and foremost, about establishing righteousness or creating good values or securing justice or making peace in the world. … But for Christians, these are all secondary to the primary good of God himself and the primary task of worshipping him and honoring him in all they do.” (pp.285-286)

He ends the book with the powerful statement that “by enacting shalom and seeking it on behalf of others through the practice of faithful presence, it is possible, just possible, that they will help to make the world a little bit better.” (p. 286)

Essay 3, Chapter 5: The Burden of Leadership: A Theology of Faithful Presence in Practice

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“The Burden of Leadership: A Theology of Faithful Presence in Practice” is the fifth chapter of the third essay of James Davison Hunter’s To Change The World. The abstract of this chapter, from Hunter’s website, reads as follows:

Everyone exercises leadership to varying degrees for we all exercise relative influence in the wide variety of contexts in which we live. By the same logic, we are all also followers in a sense, for even where we exercise leadership, we are held to account—we follow the dictates, needs, and standards of others.

Faithful presence in practice is the exercise of leadership in all spheres and all levels of life and activity. It represents a quality of commitment oriented to the fruitfulness, wholeness, and wellbeing of all. Faithful presence generates relationships and institutions that are fundamentally covenantal in character, the ends of which are the fostering of meaning, purpose, truth, beauty, belonging, and fairness—not just for Christians, but also for everyone. It is an assault on the worldliness of this present age. The burden of shalom falls to leaders.

http://jamesdavisonhunter.com/to-change-the-world/chapter-abstracts/

In this chapter, Hunter redefines the Great Commission in social, rather than geographic, terms. “Go into all the world,” according to Hunter, also means to go into every area of life, every occupation and realm of social life, not just going into every physical nation.

The argument is made that every person is both a leader and a follower, to different extents in different areas of life. We all have to learn Christian leadership, learning to lead without falling into elitism. Much of this goes back to the proper use of power which Hunter discussed in Essay 2.

In the second part of this chapter, Hunter speaks of a covenantal nature to our social relationships. In his words, “The practice of faithful presence, then, generates relationships and institutions that are fundamentally covenantal in character, the ends of which are the fostering of meaning, purpose, truth, beauty, belonging, and fairness—not just for Christians but for everyone.” (p. 263)

The third section looks at faithful presence as practice, the idea of intentionality in pursuing excellence in our lives as part of our service to God.

The fourth section addresses the burden of leadership. Again, this is not about occupying positions traditionally considered as leadership, but the way in which everyone influences those around them. Christians are to be influencing the world to bring God’s shalom to the world around us.

(Sadly, this is a chapter where Hunter tries to make his ideas practical, yet it turns out to be one of the hardest chapters to explain in concrete terms. The following chapter contains a summary of the book and does a much better job of explaining what Hunter is trying to say)