CHMN 608: Youth in Contemporary Culture Understanding the Dynamics Of Faith and Culture Understanding the Dynamics Of Faith and Culture

CHMN 608: Youth in Contemporary CultureCHMN 608: Youth in Contemporary Culture

Understanding the Dynamics Of Faith and Culture


The History of Church and CultureThe History of Church and Culture

A. Early Church: Aliens and Strangers

The early church used the terms aliens (paroikoi) and strangers (parepidemoi) to describe its relationship to the wider culture.

The Catacombs


“Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” 1 Pet. 2:11-12



“And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country – a heavenly one.” Heb. 11:13-16



• They understood themselves to be different from the surrounding culture.

• They were shaped by an alternative story (the Bible/Gospel).

• Their distinct communal life made them attractive to non-believers.

• Their witness was publicly subversive.




Stanley Hauerwas

“It is so difficult in America for Christians to imagine what it might mean for them to be Christian . . .. I wrote a little book with Will Willimon . . . called Resident Aliens, which created a readership I would not normally have as an academic. It turns out Christians were surprised to be told they are odd.”


1. It was rooted in an eschatological hope.

“He has given us new birth into a living hope . . . an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade – kept in heaven for you.” (1:3-4)


The Christian Difference in 1 Peter (Miroslav Volf)


2. It was sustained by an ecclesiastical reality.

“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into this wonderful light.” (2:9)


The Christian Difference in 1 Peter


3. It was defined positively rather than negatively.

“Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed . . . be holy in all you do.” (1:13-15)





“Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.” ( 2:21)







“ . . . abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans . . .” (2:11-12)


4. It was lived with gentleness and respect.

“But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” (3:15)




“People who are secure in themselves – more accurately, who are secure in their God – are able to live the soft difference without fear. They have no need either to subordinate or damn others, but can allow others space to be themselves. For people who live

the soft difference, mission fundamentally takes on the form of witness and invitation. They seek to win others without pressure or manipulation, sometimes even ‘without a word’ (3:1).” (Miroslav Volf)



B. Christendom: Domestication

The alien status of Christianity changed in the fourth century when Constantine became a Christian and legalized the Christian religion. Theodosius made Christianity the religion of the empire in 380 and the church grew six-fold.


B. Christendom: Domestication

• It became an established church, domesticated by culture and allied with the status quo

• It became a non-missionary church, preoccupied with its own welfare and maintenance

• It became a powerful and privileged church, made up of the educated, powerful, and rich.

• It became culturally active, but lost its counter-cultural stance


C. Church in Modernity: Privatization

With the breakdown of Christendom and the dawn of the Enlightenment, the established authority of the church was rejected and Christianity was pushed to the margins of culture.Copernicus


The church was replaced at the center by a belief in the individual and scientific reasoning:

• Human reason (disciplined by the scientific method) was seen as the only reliable avenue to truth. Authority and tradition were rejected.

• Truth claims that could be validated by reason were accorded the high place of “facts” and those that could not were placed in the optional category of “values.”



• The claims of the gospel were relegated to the private and preferential realm of personal opinion and values.


• The modern Christian church accepted its role in the private realm, operating alongside the powers of a scientifically established culture. As a chaplain to society it took care of the religious needs of its members, but did not challenge it.


D. Church in Postmodernity: Renewed Mission

As the modern view breaks down, the church faces an identity crisis:

• Shifting sensibilities (less rational, more relational, etc.)

• Many religious options (of which it is least)

• A diminished role


D. Church in Postmodernity: Renewed Mission

This crisis actually presents an opportunity:

The church in the West has a chance to break out of its cultural captivity, regain its missionary self-consciousness and re-engage culture in a way that is both culturally productive and counter cultural.




Culture and the History of MissionsCulture and the History of Missions

A. Pre WWII: Age of Conquest

• Gospel and Western culture were bound up in the concept of Christianity.• Missions was understood as a religious conquest that resulted in the “Christianizing” of heathen nations.• Converts were expected to shed their culture along with their former religion and take on a “Christian way of life.”


B. Post WWII: Age of Contextualization

• Due to de-colonization and the building up of independent nations, there was increasing sensitivity to the value of other cultures.• There was much talk of the need for missionaries to contextualize the gospel.• The imposition of Western customs on the part of missionaries was criticized as cultural imperialism.


B. Post WWII: Age of Contextualization

The World Council of Churches agreed that:

• The gospel needs to root itself in each culture.• Identification between Western culture and the gospel should be rejected.• Sensitivity to cultures is crucial. • Gospel transforms culture, and yet is also transformed by it in its expression.


C. Post Cold War: Age of Critique

• Missions has been traditionally understood as a one-way activity of spreading Christianity from the West into other parts of the world.• The Christian West was home base and the non-Christian, non-West was the mission field.• Mission was carried out by an organization or department within the church that was responsible for this activity.



Several developments have caused this view to be challenged:

• The dramatic growth and vitality of the church in the non-West paralleled by the marginalization of the church in the West.•People groups, not geographical territories, have become the means of evaluating missionary needs.• Mission was defined as the nature and responsibility of the whole church.



one of which the Churches have been – on the whole – so little conscious.” Newbigin’s subsequent work brought serious attention to the “missionary problem” of the West and spawned a developing missiology of Western culture.

In the 1980’s Lesslie Newbigin, a returned British missionary to India declared Western culture to be “the most difficult missionary frontier in the contemporary world” and “the


C. Post Cold War: Age of CritiqueThis movement is marked by several key features:

• A thorough critique of Western culture.• Reflection on “What is the gospel?” and “How does it address us in this culture?”• An openness to the insights of non-Western Christians.• Renewal of the missionary calling of the Western church to its own culture.• A reapplication at home of methods used to reach other cultures.



Newbigin’s work has opened the way for youth ministers to apply the insights and methods of traditional missions to the task of reaching youth cultures within the West. Youth ministries in England are probably the most advanced in this approach. See www.ngm.org.uk.

http://www.ngm.org.uk/




A. The Three T’s of the Gospel

Gospel, Culture and the Church TodayGospel, Culture and the Church Today

T T T


1. The gospel is transmsitted through culture.

There is no such thing as a pre-cultural or de-cultured Christianity. There is no “pure” gospel apart from culture.


Transmit


2. The gospel transcends culture.

The gospel is always greater than any one single expression of itself. The gospel is embodied by culture, but never limited by it. This calls for humility and openness.


Transcend


3. The gospel transforms culture.

The gospel judges both the destructive and debase aspects of a culture, as well as drawing out the best, deepest and truest parts. The gospel changes everything with which it comes in contact.


Transform

B. The Gospel-Culture Dialogue

1. Many Christians merely assume their views are aligned with the gospel and that the gospel’s chief aim is to address the worldly culture “out there.”

2. But George Hunsberger argues that the gospel-culture dialogue is centered in the church:



• The gospel’s first encounter is always to be with the church as it lives within its cultural situation (inner dialogue).


Gospel Church Culture


• The gospel’s second encounter unfolds as the church, which embodies the gospel in a new way of life, encounters others who share the culture (outer dialogue)


Church Embodies Culture Gospel


3. In other words, the gospel first meets culture in the church as we are confronted and shaped by its claims (inner dialogue). Likewise, culture first meets the gospel in the church as we become its “living exegesis” (outer dialogue).

Gospel Church Culture



4. Being a missionary church, then, is not first of all about a church’s outward-moving actions (going, sending, serving), but about it’s very character. “This character develops not when a Church – or its representative – leaves a geographic location. Rather, it happens when a Church takes leave of cultural loyalties alien to the Gospel.” Only as we are deeply different as Christian community can we move out to make a difference.


C. Three Levels of Mission

1. Harold Turner says that the church’s engagement with culture can take place on three levels:

• Individual/personal level• Surface culture level• Deep culture level


2. Surface culture deals with social customs and practices such as diet, dress, housing, entertainment, music, art and literature.



3. Deep culture deals with the underlying worldview, including beliefs about success, beauty, modesty, and cleanliness; definitions of right and wrong, the self, or truth; conceptions about the value of community, competition, work or material goods, etc.



4. Surface culture reflects deep culture. But this relationship is not fixed.



Multiple groups, each with its own surface culture, may share a common worldview.



And a single group united by a single surface culture may actually include those with very different worldviews.



Thus, the relationship between surface culture and deep culture is flexible.



• For instance, a Christian group may distance itself from society at the level of surface culture without making more fundamental departures at the level of deep culture. On the surface the faith community may appear to be distinct from those around it, but at the deeper level is really not countercultural at all. Donald Posterski has described this condition as being “of the world but not in it.”



• On the other hand, converts emerging from a pagan or secular worldview into a biblical one may bring with them customs and practices that are new to the Christian subculture. These elements of surface culture, if not inherently evil or destructive, may be adopted and reinvested with new meaning from the biblical worldview.



sukkot

5. Christian mission, if it is to effect real change in society and in the lives of individuals within that culture, must be targeted at the deepest levels. This “deep mission” is modeled in the ministry of Christ who sought to establish what has been described as an “upside down kingdom” – overturning the deepest notions of culture about righteousness, wealth, sin, power, and greatness.



6. An example of “surface” vs. “deep” engagement with youth culture might be found in our approach to the subject of movies. If we only talk about the morality of certain behaviors enacted on-screen or of the appropriateness of theatre going itself, we will remain at the surface level.



If we talk with our youth about the underlying worldviews of their favorite Hollywood films, and how those compare with a Christian worldview, we are doing work at a much deeper and more profound level.






Christian Responses to CultureChristian Responses to Culture

A. Neibuhr’s Five-Part Model

Christ Against Culture

rejects/separates

Christ Of Culture

affirms/assimilates

Christ Transforming

Culture

chan

ges

Christ andCulture inParadox

negotiates

Christ Above Culture

cooperates


B. Yoder’s Three-Part Model

1. Activist Church: Seeks to change society (by tackling problems). Engages culture.

3. Confessing Church: Seeks to show society (by modeling faithfulness). Worships in the midst of culture.

2. Conversionist Church: Seeks to change the believer (by focusing inward). Withdraws from culture.


C. Galllagher’s Three Responses

1. Hostility to Culture (Negative View)

• isolation/escape (fortress mentality)

• substitution (creation of an alternative “Christian culture”)



2. Acceptance of Culture (Naïve View)

• resignation (abandons attempts to influence or change culture)

• accommodation (carelessly assimilates culture)

• relativism (accepts all cultural values or practices as equally good)



3. Discernment of Culture (Nurturing View)

• views culture as a mixture of good/bad, truth/error

• denounces the false while nurturing the good

• discerns what is redeemable rather than rejecting it totally

• builds on conviction that God is already present and active in all human cultures


C. Case Studies

How did the following Biblical characters interact with their cultural setting?

• Esther• Daniel• Moses • Joseph• Naaman• John the Baptist• Paul


D. Cultural Questions in Ministry

How would you respond to the following questions? What does your response say about your Christian stance on culture?

• What kind of music do I let them listen to in the van? How do I decide?

• Should I ever see an R-rated movie with young people? PG?

• What if the latest fashion youth are wearing to church upsets the deacons?



• How should I respond to a young person who wants to join the military?

• Should I serve coffee (leaded or unleaded) at the café ministry downtown?

• Is there a place for rap or rock music in worship or at a Christian concert?

• What about line dancing at this year’s barn party?

• Should I use illustrations from movies and popular music in my sermons?



• How do I respond to kids who find church “boring” and “out of touch?

• What about tattoos and piercings? Should I allow young people with them to participate and lead out in youth programs? Church?

• How should I respond when my kids make disparaging remarks about homosexuals?”

• What should I say to the young person who criticizes church leadership for spending money on a new organ when so many are still without food?



• Do I join the fight on the school board to remove certain books from the classroom because they contain objectionable material?

Documents

CHMN 608: Youth in Contemporary Culture Understanding the Dynamics Of Faith and Culture Understanding the Dynamics Of Faith and Culture