The Crossroads of Christianity and Culture

Glifford Geerz defined religion in this way:  (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. Geertz was an anthropologist, not a theologian, so one need not accept this as a description of Christianity. But it is a prescient observation about how Christianity works within the larger context of society and in individual human lives. When the evangelist calls a person to faith in Christ he or she is precisely hoping that the result will be a transformation creating “powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations.”  And the Church, through its study of scripture, worship, fellowship, and engagement with society is absolutely seeking to deploy a system of symbols that formulate a conception of the general order...

A couple of years ago at a conference I was sitting at lunch with a group of scholar; missiologists I respect. They were generally more conservative than I am, and so when the topic of same-sex marriage came up I decided to be more an observer than participant.  Speaking of his church members one said, “they don’t want to live in a world where men marry men.”  And they all nodded. Understand that these are people who speak other languages fluently. They have lived years in other cultural settings. They read the Bible and are dedicated to following Jesus. They teach students of many races and many have married into other cultures and ethnicities. They are themselves Latino and African American and  Asian as well as White American, men and women. They cannot be easily dismissed as bigots.  But they can be located in a kind of global evangelical meta-culture which, to cite Geertz, creates a structuring of human experience that, being perceived of as uniquely real, off...

Is where everything happens. Marcelo Gleiser has written eloquently about what he calls the  Island of Knowledge . See  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cosmos-quantum-and-consciousness-is-science-doomed-to-leave-some-questions-unanswered/   for an account of where he is coming from. Gleiser’s image of an island of knowledge that is always expanding raises the question of just what is the ocean into which it expands. What is that other part of reality into which knowledge expands, but which can never be fully known?  Actually theologians and philosophers have a name for that other part of reality. It is called  transcendence,  that which is beyond the kind of human knowledge that science generates. The island that is known through science is then called  immanence.  Transcendence is the particular domain of reality that theology claims to explore with its particular ways of knowing. Those ways of knowing vary according to the cultur...

That was what a Jewish colleague said to me in describing many of the Christians he works with regularly. It seems a strange designation, but it should challenge Christians to think more deeply about their relationship with both Jews and Judaism, and how their attitude toward Israel may be the other same of the same bad coin. Let’s start with the easy part. Christian discourse about Judaism is almost always anti-Semitic. The reason for this is that it almost always characterizes Jews and Judaism in Christian terms, inevitably creating some form of religious other in order to better define what it means to be Christian. There are three main forms: The worst form of appears in the “Christ-killers” discourse that began, if not with John’s gospel then the earliest interpretations of it. It continued through the early church, inspired and justified pogroms and expulsions all through European Christian history, and most recently animates and inspires white supremeist attacks on Jews.  Mo...

Oh yes, and witches. The 1950's to the 70's were a troubled time. Out beyond the beaches of Key West, Biloxi and Galveston the Commies were setting up on Cuba and spreading their tentacles across Latin America. Back at home the tremors of social change were going to become the earthquake of the civil rights movement. There wouldn't be enough white robes, lynchings, and assassinations to keep the schools from being segregated and African Americans from having the right to vote. Then there were the original "culture wars" with Bill Buckley faced off against Dr. Benjamin Spock. The elite that had run the country was suddenly divided. In my home town the school district was in a long legal battle over segregation, one that it would decisively loose in 1972. The heartbeat of the Richardson economy was the defense industry, and in homage to our fathers we all wore three piece suits to church. But we were watching the anti-war protests on TV, and hearing the strains of ...