The Church and Western Culture: Does the Church Remain Biblical in a New World?

Photo by Diane Picchiottino on Unsplash

Something has shifted. However, you may be sitting in a church or far otherwise, you can feel it.

During the majority of the Western history, people did not only practice Christianity in the privacy of their homes on Sunday mornings. The air that the entire culture breathed was it. 

How did we get here? What does the Bible really relate as to how the church is to connect with the surrounding culture? On what side does the church lose its soul in seeking approval of the culture - and on what side does it lose all possibility of existence in declining all contact? And what is faithful Christian witness actually like in a fast becoming post-Christian West?

They are not pleasant questions. But they are essential ones.

How Did the Western Culture lose track of Christianity?

What Is Secularization and Why Should the Church Be Troubled?

This didn't happen overnight. The drift has been centuries old in a sequence of intellectual and cultural changes which are worth knowing - at least in broad outline.

The enlightenment put human reason in the center of all knowledge thus replacing divine revelation as the ultimate source of knowledge. The emergence of science led to the emergence of an increasing sense of confidence that humanity would be able to make sense of the world without any reference to God. Two world wars that were devastating the faith of millions of people made atheism culturally respectable. And the social upheavals of the 1960s knocked down most of the moral frameworks that had held Christian presuppositions in society.

This process is secularization, which is the gradual debridement of religion of its central place as a focus of public life by sociologists. The interesting thing is that it has made such incredible progress within the past half-century. Attendance at churches in Europe and in North America to a growing degree is sharply on the decline. The literacy of the Bible is gone. The common moral language that used to facilitate Christian witness has mostly fallen apart.

However, this is one thing we must not forget, Christianity is not dying. It is expanding in the Global South and the sections of Asia. Cultural Christianity, that in which individuals went to church as a social norm but not out of conviction is what is decadent in the west. What is left, what is flourishing elsewhere, is a more thought-out thing, and much more expensive. The difference is significant to the Western understanding of its position by the church.

What Does the Bible tell us about the Church and Culture?

Should Christians Mingle With Culture or Detach themselves?

This is one of the most ancient and more authentic questions of Christian theology. However, the answer to that, provided in the Bible, is rather clear and even paradoxical: the church is summoned to be the world and to be the world at the same time as to be the world essentially different.

Jesus summed this tension in the Sermon on the Mountain where he called his followers salt and light. Salt acts by contact - by getting into the food and altering it internally. Light has a way of working because it has to shine in to the darkness and that means it has to be where the darkness really is.

However, in the Bible, Jesus also said this: They are in the world, and are not of the world, when he was praying to his disciples. That is the sentence in but not of, the biblical thin line that the church has always been walking. Lean too far to the right and the church is a holistic huddle that does not actually make any difference. Bend too much to accommodation and the church has lost the uniqueness it is interesting to listen to in the first place.

Paul teaching in Romans 12 is also straight forward: do not be patterned according to this world. The conformed sound that he uses gives the imagery of being forced into a mould. The urge to assume the form that the culture around wants the church to assume is not imaginary, permanent, and apparent. It has to be continually resisted by being deliberately chosen, not a choice and forget it action.

Has the Western Church Been too Westernized by Its Culture?

Where the Church had absorbed the cultural values without observing.

The church must also pose a truthful question on the other side before it poses the question of how the culture has fallen out of Christian values, the church must ask itself how much has it assimilated with the culture that is not Christian?

The consumerism has penetrated Western Christianity DNA. The terms of church shopping, of going to whatever congregation best suits my needs are putting the body of Christ like a service provider and the congregation like a customer. The market economics is the source of that framework, and not the New Testament. The church in Acts did not meet to ensure that their likes were fully met. It came together to love and break bread and pray and to carry one another.

The other acutely Western value is individualism which has changed the thought process of many Christians on faith. The concept that religion is a strictly personal affair - that my relationship with God is between me and him and does not need to have any obligation to a community or to a life of any kind - is not a biblical one. It is an enlightenment concept in Christian attire. The scripture always portrays faith as a social, visible and public phenomenon.

And the prosperity gospel, with its promise of financial blessing and physical wellbeing as the natural outcome of faith is Christian talk and deep-rooted un-Christian assumptions. Specifically the Western belief that success and comfort should be the yardstick of good life. Nothing even a bit like this was said by Jesus. He vowed his followers a cross and then he vowed them a crown.

The sincere self-criticism belongs to the faithful culture. The church itself cannot talk effectively to a culture that it has enabled to influence it without having realized it.

The Compromise Pressure-- What the Church Is Being Asked to Change.

What Can the Church Do When Culture Insists it Change its Ideologies?

The cultural compulsion on the church is not abstract and unoriented. It is focused. Sexual ethics, definition of marriage, nature of gender, authority of Scripture, exclusive claims of the gospel these are the aspects of greatest conflict, and the temptation to merely lay ground is strong.

To address this, some churches have changed their theology to be able to fit the culture of the time, and they determined that the pastoral price of traditional covenants is too high. The direction is likely to attract short-term popularity and long-term downfall. It is not a new trend in history-- churches which lose their theological uniqueness in search of cultural relevance generally end up losing both. Individuals that seek values that are culturally acceptable would find them everywhere. They do not require the church to do that.

Other churches have reacted by circling the wagons - making no cultural engagement pure and no accommodation a compromise. This guards the purity of theology, but tends to create communities that are mean, defensive and in actual sense hard to access by outsiders. The reality that they are protecting is buried under the pose that alienates the people it purports to be protecting.

Biblical journey is more difficult than both. It is maintaining a stand to what Scripture teaches and in the process with true humility, true love and the sort of gracious intercourse whereby the truth is found appealing but not simply right. Jude refers to it as a struggle to defend the faith. Paul refers to it as speaking the truth in love. Both words are essential. The one cannot be dropped in place of the other.

Is the Church Growing Irrelevant? What Relevance Means In The Real World.

What Can the Church Do to remain Relevant and not lose Itself?

One of the most abused and misinterpreted words in the contemporary church discussions is the term relevance. The threat of irrelevance has mainly driven a lot of churches to make alterations which were rather about becoming culturally cool than making discipleship. The improved light, the more hip music, the lighter language are okay, but they do not answer the questions that people are carrying.

The church is not seen as irrelevant since the mode of worship is too old. It is felt to be irrelevant due to the fact that the Western culture has been largely convinced that transcendent truth, moral authority beyond the self and the necessity of being saved are no longer serious terms any longer. It is not a question of aesthetic. It is an apologetic one. The argument that the church needs to be able to make is appealing and sincere: that the questions to which it provides answers are the correct questions.

And here is the point: under the panache apparent of a culture which has proclaimed itself ample, individuals are literally starving. For meaning. For belonging. For forgiveness. For hope. The church does not have to create them. They are what the gospel has to say. Relevance will itself take care of itself in a church that aims at addressing those profound human needs with the substance of the Christian message.

The church of that time did not possess political influence, cultural status, or any type of institutional organization. It was a minority movement in an unfriendly empire. And it had upset the world - not by growing more like Rome, but by being so truly different that people could not stop noticing and questioning. The Western church can have the same model today.

What the Post-Christian West Really Needs of the Church.

Still needed in Western Culture? Christianity. What the Gospel Hath To Gift Which Naughtie More Can.

The western culture has gone through a number of generations seeking to establish a thriving non-Christian culture. The outcomes are getting more difficult to disregard. Loneliness, anxiety, addiction, and despair rates have increased drastically in the already richer and more technologically developed societies than any ever witnessed in the history of humanity. The abundance of the West in terms of materialism has failed to yield the wellbeing that it bragged. Something is missing.

What the church is able to offer that other institutions do not is a consistent explanation of what human beings are, why they are significant, what is wrong, and how it can be changed. The gospel is not a lifestyle choice among others. It provides the solution to the most profound questions the human heart has ever had.

Another thing that the church can provide people with is authentic community in a culture with an epidemic of isolation. The body of Christ vision in which all members are welcomed, and the strong carry the burden of weak, and one does not tread a solitary path in life, is the most powerful counter-cultural notion. It gives them what people are literally dying to get.

And the church gives hope, which is not conditional on circumstances, political results, or individual success. Resurrection-based hope is no mere trifle in a culture that is becoming more and more anxious about the future. It is just what the moment requires.

What Faithful Christian Witness Really Approaches to Be in a Post-Christian World.

What is the Way of Christians to Total Western Culture and still Remain Whole?

The call to faithful witness in the post-Christian culture is not this call to argument in the first place - but reasoned engagement is absolutely necessary. It is more of an appeal to embodiment. The testimony of the church most of all has always been the quality of its common life.

When the people of God really love each other on either side of the lines that seem to separate the culture around, when they care about the poor with their own time and money, when they exhibit a happiness and a peacefulness that do not depend upon circumstances, people take note. They ask questions. And that is where the discussion starts.

Peter makes it easy, you should always be ready to provide an explanation of the hope you have, however you must do it softly and with respect. The hope is seen at the beginning of the witness. The politeness and esteem will decide whether the people will continue to listen after they made their request. Being able to win an argument and still lose the person is not faithfulness. It is just noise.

Christians must also learn to regain the boldness to be true different without making a nuisance out of it. Being a real alternative in the culture that was represented in money, sex, power and status will be noticeable. Some of it will be hostile. That is what Jesus had warned his followers. But faithfulness is better than acceptance- and a life that is seen to have been fashioned by something beyond this world is one of the most enticing things that a post-Christian culture can come across.

FAQs

Q: Is the western church already losing the culture war? The church did not get summoned to a culture war. It was called to be faithful. The initial church lacked any cultural authority and transformed the world nonetheless. And the degree of success does not lie in cultural dominance - in faithful witness.

Q: is it a sin when churches make modernizations in their style to meet the modern people? Style can and should adapt. The content of the gospel is that which cannot be negotiable. The message stays. The method can change.

Q: What should the Christians do to friends or relatives that have dropped the faith? Love, patience, and real relationship - not arguing and pressuring. Humans do not often reason their way back to faith. It is commonly brought back by his and her love.

Q: Does the church have a role to play publicly about political and social matters? The church must preach where Scripture preaches- clearly, humbly, conscious of the fact that its chief citizenship belongs not to any nation but to the kingdom of God.

Q: Is the Christian actually on the rise or on the decline? Christianity is among the rapidly increasing movements in the world. What is fading is cultural Christianity in the West - formal faith due to habit of heart and not to belief. Such a downward trend, though hurting, can end up with a healthier church.

Conclusion: The Church Has Not Been Here Before.

The present is particularly hard. This is a very challenging period to be a Christian in the west, as due to the speed of the cultural shift, the complexity of the issues and the closeness of the pressure that extends into families, workplaces and even friendships.

However, no culture has ever had a permanent home of the church. It has been, ever, a pilgrim folk--not unwelcome, not unwelcomed, not called to comfort, but to faith. The early Christians were a niche, fringed, counter-cultural group in a strong empire that was not inherently familiar with their values and found their claims offensive. They were not blessed with the benefits of cultural Christendom. And they changed history.

The spirit that gave them power is the same that is working in the church today. It is the same gospel that made the Roman world to turn upside down. It is the same Jesus who vowed to establish his own church, and that the gates of hell could not overcome his church.

The cultural head winds exist. They are not even, however, the last word.

The West church is not currently called to reclaim its lost cultural hegemony. It is to be honestly, gladly, and boldly itself - a fellowship informed by the gospel, which has a place in the Scripture, who truly love, and who are not afraid to be unlike. That is not a small calling. It might be the greatest one ever invested in by this generation of Christians.

 

                                                             Written by Heritier Cyuzuzo

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