Church in Culture

   Church in culture is not a new concern or conversation surrounding cultural contexts and the contextualization of the Gospel. There is a general fear and concern by the church that by engaging marginalized people in contextualization via culturally relevant activities, the church will succumb to syncretism. Culture in itself is a constant factor in human society, as well as, in ecclesia / church. Defining culture in broad general terms William Kornblum writes,

We can define culture as all the modes of thought, behavior, and production that are handed down from one generation to the next by means of communicative interaction – language, gestures, writing, building, and all other communication among humans – rather than by genetic transmission, or heredity. This definition encompasses a vast array of behaviors, technologies, religions, and so on – in other words, just about everything thought or made by humans. . . . A society’s culture consists of all the ways in which its members think about their society and communicate about it among themselves.[1] 

 

According to Kornblum ecclesia is one aspect of a society’s culture. In his writings, Newbigin confirms this definition in a shorter version, he writes, “By the word culture we have to understand the sum total of ways of living developed by a group of human beings and handed on from generation to generation.”[2] Newbigin asserts the importance of the church in culture by placing both the church and the gospel directly within the culture of a society. He asserts, “There is no culturally neutral position. North American culture has its unique embodiment of the gospel.”[3] Newbigin more fully explains his statement about the lack of neutrality within culture, especially where ecclesia and the gospel are concerned, he asserts,

Every statement of the gospel in words is conditioned by the culture of which those words are a part, and every style of life that claims to embody the truth of the gospel is a culturally conditioned style of life. There can never be a culture-free gospel. Yet the gospel, which is from the beginning to the end embodied in culturally conditioned forms, calls into question all cultures, including the one in which it was originally embodied.[4] 

 

Newbigin’s diagnostic suggests that the difficulty the church is experiencing within culture is due to the embedded cultural orientation. Newbigin gives a further assessment in the diagnostic of the ecclesial struggle for identity. He writes, “The Christendom curse/context is the main context for Christian dialogue – this makes it extremely difficult to break out of the limitation imposed by Christendom upon conversation with non-western civilizations.”[5] This perspective represents Newbigin relating his personal missionary encounter within non-western cultures, but the transition in North America to a postmodern and post-Christendom culture correlates with his conclusion. The conclusion is the church in western societies is embedded completely within culture. The church in culture has lost its place as the central creative force. Louis Dupré, Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at Yale University, in an interview asserts, 

. . . the West appears to have said its definitive farewell to a Christian culture. Little of the old hostility remains. Our secular colleagues are happy to recognize the debt our civilization owes to the Christian faith to the extent that the faith, having been absorbed by culture itself, has become simply another cultural artifact. Christianity has become an historical factor subservient to a secular culture rather than functioning as the creative power it once was.[6]

If Dupré’s conclusion is correct then it is no wonder the church in culture has lost its position of influence. Western culture in North America particularly has as one of its basic premises individual freedom. It is the radical individualism in the United States of America that has produced the cultural transition that has moved the church out of the center of culture.[7] The societal structure of Western civilization allows for individual freedom. Newbigin asserts, “Western civilization has created an individual centered culture rather than a community centered culture. ‘The autonomous human being is still the center – with total freedom of choice.’”[8] Individual autonomy in itself takes away any compelling reason to embrace any particular truth claim and opens opportunities for all truth claims to be treated on an equal basis. Dupré states, 

Culture itself has become the real religion of our time, and it has absorbed all other religion as a subordinate part of itself. It even offers some of the emotional benefits of religion, without exacting the high price of faith demands. We have all become atheists, not in the hostile, antireligious sense of an earlier era, but in the sense that God no longer matters absolutely in our closed world, if God matters at all.[9]

Dupré in this interview goes on to describe the lack of church in culture in the West due to the overarching triumph of over two hundred years of cultural transition. The subordination of Christianity was inevitable.

This subordination of Christianity in culture is exactly why the metro area of Portland, Oregon is the focus of this paper: due to the cultural characteristics of the inhabitants of this area. Portland provides a unique opportunity to examine the future of the church in a postmodern and post-Christendom culture and the development of alternative missional ecclesia amid the marginalized people. The challenge of contextualization of the Gospel amid the marginalized with a meaningful theological praxis should be of great concern for the future of the church in North America. The lessons learned through the practitioners who have successfully created and sustain ecclesia amid Portland’s marginalized people may hold significant influence upon contextualization practices and strategies.

---

[1] William Kornblum, Sociology in a Changing World (Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2003), 56.

[2] Newbigin, Foolishness to The Greeks, 3.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 4.

[5] Ibid., 7.

[6] Louis Dupré, “Seeking Christian Interiority: An Interview with Louis Dupré”, n.d., http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=214, (accessed September 8, 2011).

[7] For further reading on the issue of radical individualism see David Myers, The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).

[8] Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks, 15.

[9] Dupré.