Culture & the American Evangelical (Pt 1)
By Jonathan Dodson | July 2nd, 2010 | Category: Gospel and Culture | 3 commentsI’ll never forget the day when one of my esteemed pastors walked up to me and disapprovingly commented: “Is that a rock star haircut? Interesting.” Although I jokingly blew off his attack on my hairstyle choice, I knew from his response this was no laughing matter. I had clearly gone the way of the world. His comment made a somewhat spiritually mature twenty-seven year old feel like a spiritual infant. Should a simple hairstyle call into question my personal piety? Was I too hip to be holy?
Too Holy to be Hip
Peddle back with me to my first church in the 80s, known by its insiders as “The Mission.” I was the oldest kid in church, a single teen among adults and kids. I always wondered why there weren’t any other teenagers. As I matured, the reason became apparent. Not only were there no teenagers, there were rarely any newcomers. The Mission firmly believed its role in the kingdom of God was to pray for revival; that’s it. No evangelism, no cultural engagement, no social justice, and for many, no secular music, no television. On top of that, or should I say inside of it, there were the prophetic power brokers, whose super-spiritual connections led them to condemn certain people they deemed too “worldly”. The Mission was hardly missional, too hollowed with churchly holiness to engage the “unholy culture”. Their problem was the reverse—too holy to be hip.
The Church & Culture Pendulum
Noted historian Mark Noll has documented the 20th century pendulum of American evangelical postures regarding church and culture. In an article entitled “Where We Are and How We Got Here?”, he demonstrates the absence of significant evangelical thought and action in the first half of the 20th century.[1] White American evangelicals abandoned serious engagement with academia, popular culture, and politics. The in-house fundamentalist-modernist controversy left fundamentalist Christians disconnected and quarantined from the ideas of the universities, the burgeoning impact of television, and civil rights legislature.
However, the second half of the 20th century presented a new evangelical—concerned, engaged, and actively influencing culture. Noll notes two key developments that contributed to a shift in evangelical posture towards culture. First, immigration reform led to an influx of de-Europeanized Christians, bolstering evangelical numbers. Second, the civil rights movement was launched from the southern African American evangelical church. As a result, American evangelicalism grew in number and influence. Subsequently, three culturally reforming movements followed—volunteer organizations (Young Life, Campus Crusade, Fuller Seminary), charismatic movements, and the Jesus People (Calvary Chapel).
Is Culture our Friend or our Foe?
The Jesus People rode the church and culture pendulum from quarantine to contextualization. Without quarantining themselves from hip-py fads and music all together, the Jesus People found a way to live out a contextualized 70’s gospel. They didn’t view culture as the enemy, but as a friend. Noll comments: “From the 1920s to the 1950s, American evangelicals had tended to view popular culture as an enemy—to keep the gospel it was necessary to flee the world. In the late 1960s, the Jesus People treated popular culture as a potential friend—to spread the gospel it was necessary to use what the world offered.” Friend or foe, hip or holy, quarantined or contextualized—do we have to choose?
[1] Mark Noll, “Where We Are and How We Got Here?” Sept 29, 2006, Christianity Today. See also George Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991).
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Thanks, bro, for a stimulating article, sorely needed to be heard by the majority of our evangelical brethren.
Looking back at my personal development, I remember thinking that if God did not bring national revival, then our country would go down the tubs very quickly. Many like James Dobson and Chuck Colson have turned to the sphere of politics as the only hope for nation. They look to prayer and revival without missional and gospel engagement. I have completely lost hope in a national revival apart from church planting and gospel ministry in urban centers. The days of revival occurred when the WASP (white anglo-saxon protestants) still remained true. It is hard for me to imagine hoards of immigrants and secular postmodernists coming to Christ without incarnational, cross-centered, missional engagement.
I was wondering if you have read James Hunter’s book, “To Change the World”? In it Hunter gives an incredible assessment of the Christian Right, Progressive Left, and the Neo-Anabaptists and says for the past 30 years, Christians have sought to change the world only through politics. “Nearly everyone [focuses on] politics as the central means of changing the world” (p. 11). He argues that Christians today cannot even conceive of a public witness apart from politics. It’s our only public voice – how sad and true! Also, in the first part of his book, Hunter does a masterful job of defining culture and how it changes, debunking the democratic view that states: “If we only have a majority, then we can turn the tide.” He says that cultures rarely, if ever, change from the bottom up, from grassroots movements to national reformation; rather, change occurs from the top down. I’m half way through Hunter’s book, and it has been immensely helpful. Keller says in his recommendation: “No writer or thinker has taught me as much as James Hunter has about this all important and complex subject of how culture is changed.” I think every church planter dead serious about gospel renewal in urban centers (especially in the Acts 29 Network) must read this book!
I look forward to your next blog installments.
Thanks Allen!
Yes, I’ve read Hunter’s book and did a tweet thru #2changetheworld. In fact, I’ll probably start a review of the book today. It is a good read. I think his will-to-power critique of both the Right and the Left rings true, as does his apolitical alternative: a faithful presence of Christians in the city commons reflecting the truth and love of the incarnate Christ.
Hunter’s work needs more biblical-theological support, but the little that he does is spot-on. His emphasis on faithful presence, not active evangelism, raises a silent question that probably needs more vigorous debate: “Does the burden of evangelism sit on individual believers or on the church as a community?” It is striking how little Paul talks about evangelism when writing the churches. Yet, he talks incessantly about the church being a certain kind of community, one very close to what Hunter envisions.
Thanks for the recommendation that planters read this work. It’s one of the best books I’ve read this year.