The Crossroads of Christianity and Culture

Christ alone, received by faith, is the timeless inheritance of the Christian community and timeless gift of God to humanity. Doctrines, forms of worship, and ethics are bound to culture, and thus bound to change.  Until we United Methodists overcome the confusion between faith in Christ, the beliefs we articulate, the rules that guide our behavior, and the worship that expresses our praise then we're doomed to endless division.  Recently a group of self-identified "Wesleyan" theologians have used a soundbite from the book of Jude (1:3) to validate their theological work; "to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people." ( https://nextmethodism.org/summit-document/ ) Reading the paper that follows it is clear that the theologian's project is to articulate a Wesleyan doctrine base on his concept of holiness. It is a good work, and well done, but the quote from Jude is all wrong as an introduction.  Jude doesn't ask that peop

I guess I'm a little fed up right now. Maybe you are too.  Right now when I hear some of our Methodist leaders I find the phrase "cul-de-sac of dreams” comes to mind. As far as I know it originates in a Mary Chapin Carpenter song "The Long Way Home" on her 2001 album "Time, Sex, Love."  A cul-de-sac is a particularly safe kind of neighborhood. No through traffic. Easy to just keep going around in circles. Strangers enter only if they are lost.  So what makes a cul-de-sac of dreams? The moment when public image becomes more important than lived reality. We build houses of cards on cul-de-sacs of dreams when public relations become more important than the truth. And that happens most easily when we adopt the same language and ethos of promotion typical of American corporate culture. Don't get me wrong. I'm all in for inculturation. I wrote book about inculturation of the gospel: The Gospel among the Nations,  Orbis Press 2013. And I’m all about evange