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“I only have the time to read or listen to a few extra things each month or two. One of the few things I can claim as my best treasure is the bi-monthly MARS HILL AUDIO Journal. The depth of each issue sharpens my ability to think more clearly with a Biblical mind, and helps me to understand the cultural air I and my congregation are breathing.”
—Pastor Michael Philliber, New Life Presbyterian Church, Midland, Texas
II. Dualism in literature, business, and sports
III. Discipleship in cultural context
IV. Discerning the spirit of the age
V. The duties of faithful shepherds
You can listen for free to the bonus tracks (more than 40 of them) of the CD version of the MARS HILL AUDIO Journal by clicking here. Topics include: the current debate on technology and ethics; the music of Mozart; why the Church should be more welcoming toward the elderly; the life and imagination of C. S. Lewis; and, how colleges and universities can help students grow into adulthood.
Click here to read some of the letters that Ken Myers has sent to MARS HILL AUDIO listeners. Topics include the nature of Christian hope and the link between the humanity of Jesus and our own.
In his 1948 essay, “Notes towards the Definition of Culture,” T. S. Eliot asserted “the most important question that we can ask, is whether there is any permanent standard, by which we can compare one civilisation with another, and by which we can make some guess at the improvement or decline of our own.” If the Church hopes to respond wisely to the patterns of living and believing that form a culture, we need to make comparative judgments. Unfortunately, many influential leaders guiding our churches seem to be unable to ask this question, let alone answer it. One finds little evidence in their books and seminars that they believe we could even make a guess about cultural improvement or decline. Many have never met a cultural trend that they couldn’t embrace.
Eliot believed that there were criteria to discern cultural progress or decline. “We can distinguish between higher and lower cultures; we can distinguish between advance and retrogression.” Furthermore, “We can assert with some confidence that our own period is one of decline; that the standards of culture are lower than they were fifty years ago; and that the evidences of this decline are visible in every department of human activity.”
What criteria might we use to recognize the distinctions behind such judgments? One could ask whether God’s revealed will for human experience is more or less accomplished by cultural trajectories. One could ask whether the true, the good, and the beautiful are more encouraged by new cultural arrangements. One could ask whether the givenness of nature and human nature were honored or dishonored by some cultural development. But many of today’s Christian leaders seem to deny the possibility of making such judgments, with the possible exception of obvious epidemics of immorality: increased divorce rates or an increase in pornography or some other statistically measurable trend in which more people are committing obvious sins.
What is missing from the observations of many people guiding the Church’s cultural engagement is the recognition that cultural forms have consequences. For example, James Turner’s Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America examined the effect of growing fascination in the 17th and 18th centuries with empirically verifiable, and precise data—with the “mathematizing” of the world. That sort of mindset, sustained by various technical, economic, and political changes, gave rise to Deism and eventually to more widespread atheism. It also resulted in a dualism that amounted to practical atheism: people who believe in God but for whom such belief makes no difference in everyday life.
Ideas and beliefs have antecedents. The shape of cultural life has a deep effect on what and how we believe, and hence on how we behave. One could list dozens of examples: the way in which the ubiquity of technology promotes the deep assumption that we can fix anything; the way in which proliferating mechanisms of convenience erode the virtues of patience and long-suffering; the way in which social institutions that promote radical pluralism undercut the plausibility of specific, exclusive truth claims; the way in which the elimination of standards of public propriety and manners undermines assumptions about the legitimacy of authority and deference to the communal needs; the way in which the high prestige accorded to entertainers creates the conviction that every valuable experience should be entertaining.
Configuring Church and culture,
part V: The duties of faithful shepherds
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MARS HILL AUDIO
Ken Myers on Configuring Church and Culture
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© 2008 MARS HILL AUDIO