Nov 13, 2015 | Culture
I read James Davison Hunter’s “To Change The World” several years ago and thought it was a brilliant analysis of the power of cultural institutions to shape the culture. His strategy for cultural engagement, though, left me puzzled at the time. He called it “faithful presence,” and there didn’t seem to be any sense that he believes Christians should want to influence the culture. This question of Christians and their relationship to culture is a complicated one, as H. Richard Niebuhr described in his seminal book on the subject, Christ and Culture. I think I understand “faithful presence” better now, but what is the take away of a discussion of culture for Christian parents?
We cannot take for granted or be unaware of the culture’s influence on our kids. It is more than obvious that we live in a post-Christian culture hostile to our faith. Some parents fear this hostility, or try to protect their children from it. I have a different take: culture can be our children’s best friend, if we know how to use it. We call using culture to defend and affirm the faith cultural apologetics, and it gets an entire chapter in the book; it is that important. Culture is ubiquitous, so every day we practically we have a myriad of opportunities to strengthen our kids faith as we interact with the culture.
Christian parents will want to read Hunter’s book to get an understanding of where true cultural influence comes from, and why the assault on Christianity has such power in our day. The Gospel Coalition has just published a eBook that takes a look at Hunter’s work five years later:
In 2010, noted University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter published the landmark book To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. On the five-year anniversary of its publication, we asked eight contributors to engage the book’s thesis and assess its effect on the ongoing interaction of evangelical Christians with the surrounding culture. The result is The Gospel Coalition’s first eBook, Revisiting ‘Faithful Presence’:To Change the World Five Years Later. You can download the book, for free, to read in your preferred format.
You can find an introduction to the book at The Gospel Coalition’s website, and and links to download it in various formats.
Nov 6, 2015 | Parents and Family
Unless you are wedded, no pun intended, to a left-wing ideological agenda you know intuitively that the traditional family of a married mother and father with children works best for the children. This is simply indisputable, and we can add more recently released studies to further confirm this. One of the study’s authors said, “children appear most apt to succeed well as adults when they spend their entire childhood with their married mother and father, and especially when the parents remain married to the present day.” William Galston at the Wall Street Journal argues that the breakdown of the family is especially problematic for the black family. (more…)
Nov 3, 2015 | Parents and Family, Theology
There is much talk in American culture about young Christians going off to college or into life and abandoning their faith. I’m sure there are many reasons why this is so, but I think one consistent reason is that teenagers see their parents and people in church live out a faith they simply cannot relate to. I came across an example in a piece about a young rap singer who grew up in a church where his father was a pastor, and while it doesn’t appear that he has completely abandoned the faith, he’s definitely abandoned the “religion” he was raised in. What exactly was it that alienated him? (more…)
Nov 1, 2015 | Truth
How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of the thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves – flung from one extreme to another: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism and so forth. Every day new sects spring up, and what St Paul says about human deception and the trickery that strives to entice people into error (cf. Eph 4: 14) comes true.
Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be “tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine”, seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.
We, however, have a different goal: the Son of God, the true man. He is the measure of true humanism. An “adult” faith is not a faith that follows the trends of fashion and the latest novelty; a mature adult faith is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ. It is this friendship that opens us up to all that is good and gives us a criterion by which to distinguish the true from the false, and deceipt from truth.
—Homily of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Dean of the College of Cardinals, Mass for the Election of the Supreme Pontiff, St. Peter’s Basilica, 18 April 2005
Oct 31, 2015 | Theology, Uncategorized
But wait, I thought it was Halloween. Well, there would have been no Halloween with ghosts and ghouls and candy galore if not for Reformation Day. There is some argument among scholars as to whether Halloween has solely pagan or Christian roots. It is indisputable, though, that without the November 1 holiday (holy day) of All Saints Day (instituted by Pope Gregory III in the eighth century to honor all saints and martyrs), there would have been no Halloween. The day before came to be known over time as All Hallows Eve, and eventually become Halloween.
So how does Reformation Day come into the picture? On this day in 1517 Martin Luther, dismayed by what he considered some corrupt practices in the Catholic Church, penned what has come to be called the 95 Thesis. He then nailed it to the door of the Wittenberg Castle church. What was a common means of entreating intellectual debate in the 16th Century, written in Latin and not the vernacular, ended up starting a Reformation that turned the Western world upside down.
A brief 5 Minutes in Church History by Stephen Nichols gives a concise explanation of why this day turned into Reformation Day.
Recent Comments