Is This a Way to Make Christianity More “Culture Friendly”?

It has become clear that the new wave of Christian leaders have left behind the “Christ Against Culture” paradigms of Focus on the Family, Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition, and company. The new way is identifying causes which evangelicalism can support and then expressing Christian love in becoming “c0-belligerents” with others who also support those causes. Witness the immersion of the church in environmentalism, HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, hunger, etc. A significant motivation in the move of the church toward these causes is due to the constant hammering of its critics that the Christian church is socially and politically disengaged.

But have we become more culture friendly? In fact, if you look at the language of the new wave of church leadership you come across phrases that in and of themselves are much less friendly – like, “transforming culture,” Jesus’ Lordship “over all of life,” “no part of life that is not claimed by Christ,” etc. While we think that our immersion in culture might make us appear more friendly to the world, in fact, on a closer look this kind of language is much more alarming.

While the world might criticize the church of being disengaged, they might become even more critical of evangelicalism’s vision not merely to “save souls from hell” but lead culture into obedience to Christ. The culture has called the church to care in a more incarnational way about the wounds and scars of this world. The church is responding. But they can’t respond as the world responds, without an agenda. All must be done for Christ, and the church cannot leave that behind. Only this time the language of the church is much more threatening if the world stops to look and carefully observe. They might long for the day when the church was just “winning souls” (as if that day ever existed-not!!!!) rather than transforming culture.

See the interview in Christianity Today with James Davison Hunter. He is the author of To Change the World. He asserts that our strategies to transform culture are ineffective, and the goal itself is misguided. He is inclined toward the Anabaptist vision of creating colonies of heaven that operate on the basis of Kingdom principles rather than “transforming culture models.” These communities are like the Mennonites in principle if not in actual manifestation. Their best witness to Christ is a demonstration of how the kingdom of God works and drawing others to Christ through it rather than the model of penetration of culture and changing it from the inside.

I have to say that after 40 years of seeing evangelicalism at work in culture transformation there is more here that deserves attention. In fact, the Christianity I know doesn’t have to preach cultural engagement. Good Christians all over the world have done the works of the Good Samaritan in ways that are leaven in the lump. Transformed hearts create engaged Christians.