Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Faith and Culture
Richard John Neuhaus wrote recently at First Things:
Is Hummel vs Hummel-knock-offs-holding-scripture-cards a serious cultural engagement? Is "Christian country" decor, all purchased from the nearest Lighthouse "bookstore" serious cultural engagement? I would argue that such things are simply trivializing.
But what is worst of all is that they do not just trivialize a Christian's engagement of cultural, they trivialize a Christian's faith in general. How, if you take your faith truly seriously, can you hide in a home surrounded by some blanket of Christian labeled gee-gaws? At a minimum, if you take your faith seriously, you want to be out in the world where you have an opportunity to share that faith - and that's the minimum!
Faith taken seriously changes us, and once changed, if for the better, would we not naturally seek to change those around us?
The crisis Father Neuhaus discusses in his essay is not just a crisis of Christian action it the public sphere - it is a crisis of genuine faith developing in the heart of people that call Jesus Christ their Lord and Savior! Too many say the words, but they fail to let them enter their hearts.
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“Gnosticism” may not be the right word for it, but it is what Harold Bloom in The American Religion calls a religion of the self. It is a seductive way of accommodating differences by declaring a truce in contentions over truth. The “Christ without culture” model—meaning Christianity indifferent to culture—would seem to produce a circumstance in which religion is impervious to culture and culture is impervious to religion. But, in fact, it results in religion’s acquiescing in the culture’s demand that religion confine itself to the sphere of privacy.In the piece Father Neuhaus calls for engagement of the culture on the highest levels - abortion, same-sex marriage, freedom of religious expression. He is right to do so. But as a Catholic, I think he misses the biggest problem that faces people of faith, at least Evangelicals. That is the effort to engage cultural trivially. Neuhaus talks about engage or not engage, but I think it is a question of seriously engage, or trivially engage.
[...]
The Church is not merely a voluntary association of the spiritually like-minded catering to the indulgence of private sensibilities in one of Babylon’s many enclaves of choice. The Church is the Body of Christ through time proposing to the world the new creation inaugurated in his cross and resurrection and promised return. Whether against, above, in paradox, or transforming, she is always critically engaged—never surrendering to the cultural captivity that is the delusion of “Christ without culture.”
Is Hummel vs Hummel-knock-offs-holding-scripture-cards a serious cultural engagement? Is "Christian country" decor, all purchased from the nearest Lighthouse "bookstore" serious cultural engagement? I would argue that such things are simply trivializing.
But what is worst of all is that they do not just trivialize a Christian's engagement of cultural, they trivialize a Christian's faith in general. How, if you take your faith truly seriously, can you hide in a home surrounded by some blanket of Christian labeled gee-gaws? At a minimum, if you take your faith seriously, you want to be out in the world where you have an opportunity to share that faith - and that's the minimum!
Faith taken seriously changes us, and once changed, if for the better, would we not naturally seek to change those around us?
The crisis Father Neuhaus discusses in his essay is not just a crisis of Christian action it the public sphere - it is a crisis of genuine faith developing in the heart of people that call Jesus Christ their Lord and Savior! Too many say the words, but they fail to let them enter their hearts.
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