The Crossroads of Christianity and Culture

The Austrians have a saying: "There is no bad weather, only the wrong underwear."  Right now the UMC is wearing the wrong underwear for our current cultural and social climate. The United Methodist Discipline, however diligently tweaked over the last two centuries, is based on a pre-modern ecclesiology rooted in a pre-Christian understandings of the nature of reality, the social order, and the moral order.  After beginning with a vibrant diversity of congregational structures linked by complex personal ties, the early church inculturated its structure and message into the prevailing Graeco-Roman culture. It became hierarchical in just those ways that mimicked the Roman Empire. Equally influential from pre-Christian Graeco-Roman culture was an ideal of human personhood, and indeed all creature-hood, governed by unchanging forms and their characteristics.  Each position in the hierarchy was governed by its own form, so everything from inanimate objects up to the popes and e...

Around 10 years ago, a friend of mine asked his teenage children, "What is the one issue that my generation is talking about that your generation doesn't even think worth discussing?"  Their answer? Sexual identity. That fits very well with what surveys show us about Gen X and GenZ. They take for granted the right and rightness of same-sex marriage, transgender identity, and in general LGBTQ inclusion. Indeed, more than 70% of  all  Americans believe that same-sex marriage should be allowed. Traditionalists will argue that surveys don’t matter. They argue that the Church must stand firm on Biblical mandates in the face of cultural and social changes.  But it does matter, and not only because the traditionalists are wrong on the teaching of the Bible. The mission of the church is to preach the gospel. To do this evangelists, and an evangelistic church, must speak and act in ways that people understand. To do this the church must show, as Jesus showed, how the gospel a...