The Crossroads of Christianity and Culture

The church faces a change in human self-understanding as great or greater than that of the Enlightenment, but seems strangely complacent in its own destruction. Conflicts over the theological status of LBGTQ+ persons that have stuttered through Christian communities over the last 70 years. They are urgent, and deeply affect the well being of hurting people. Yet they are a mere foretaste of conflicts to come. Humanity faces tectonic changes in our self-understanding that will sweep both sides of these late modern controversies down into obscurity as their debates become unintelligible in an emerging global culture.  Each of us is currently participating and even hastening on these changes in what it means to be human. Have you had any part of your body replaced; from near ubiquitous lens replacement surgery for cataracts to heart valve replacement to replacements of knees, hips, kidneys, lungs, corneas, livers, skin and so on. Face transplants are now possible, and nervous system tr...

American Christianity ultimately formed itself around competing empires of the mind. They are crumbling, and that is why there is little left for coming generations in need of good news.  (A warning. I note that in dialogue the other must represent itself, which makes any overview like this fraught with the possibility of misrepresentation. I'll only note that while I was educated in a classically liberal tradition, I grew up in an orthodox/traditional tradition and taught for most of my career in self-consciously evangelical schools. Mea culpa if I misrepresent anyone, but I have been listening from within both sides for a long time.) If one wished to have a representative image of Christendom it would be hard to do better than an illustration from 1579 by Diego de Valedes work  Rhetorica Christiana.  It is entitled "The Great Chain of Being." It depicts a clearly hierarchical world, rising through the different orders of creation  encircled by golden chains that ri...