Background on Christ And Culture

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Six Factors Impacting our Understanding of Christ and Culture

Author

Keywords

We have the same biblical texts that earlier generations of Christians thought their way through, of course, but our reflections are shaped by six unique factors. (1) Especially in the Anglo-Saxon wo...

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Christians Can Cultivate Culture

Author

JR Woodward

Keywords

Scripture

Titus 2:7-8, Jeremiah 2:4-9, Romans 12:21, Matthew 5:13-16, Genesis 41:

While there is a place for condemning, critiquing, consuming and copying culture, the primary posture Christ followers are to have in the world is as culture makers. In regard to history, the word cul...

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Culture is Like Gravity

Author

JR Woodward

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 12:2, 1 Corinthians 15:33, Philippians 4:8-9, Ephesians 5:18-21, Deuteronomy 6:6-9

Culture is like gravity. We never talk about it, except in physics classes. We don’t include gravity in our weekly planning processes. No one gets up thinking about how gravity will affect their day. ...

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Consider the Culture

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

One of the areas often missed in a lot of Christian apologetics is the social setting in which a person encounters the gospel. For example, it is far easier to espouse "rational arguments" f...

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What do We Mean by “Culture?”

Author

D. A. Carson

Keywords

Not very long ago, “culture” commonly referred to what is now meant by “high culture.” For instance, we might have said, “She has such a cultured voice.” If a person read Shakespeare, Goethe, Gore Vid...

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No Native Country

Author

Kenneth Cragg

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 49:6, Revelation 7:9, John 3:16, Galatians 3:28, Romans 10:12, Acts 1:8, Matthew 28:19-20

The Gospel as such has no native country. He who goes out humbly with Christ in the world of all races will perpetually discover the multiple, but constant, relevance of what he takes. It takes a whol...

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Getting to the Image

Author

Brian Zahnd

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 12:2, Galatians 6:1, Proverbs 9:10, James 1:4, Isaiah 61:3

Think of an ancient icon of Christ. Imagine that a thousand-year-old Christ Pantocrator painted on a wooden panel is discovered in some forgotten monastery. The image of Christ is there, but it’s cove...

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"Pure" Christianity and A Slave-Based Christianity

In this short excerpt, the abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass describes the tension between faith in Christ and faith in a form of Christianity willing to enslave an entire race of peopl...

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One of the gravest dangers to the Christian faith

Author

Alan Paton

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 5:1-21, 1 Samuel 8:4-22, Isaiah 1:10-17 , Matthew 23:23-28 , Galatians 3:26-29, Psalm 146:3-9

One of the gravest dangers to the Christian faith is its wholesale appropriation of the larger culture. When this happens, the citizens of those places cannot recognize the difference between their cu...

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What We Preach

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Revelation 2:4-5, Colossians 1:18, Philippians 2:8-11, Galatians 1:6-9, 1 Corinthians 2:2

A strong church once inscribed these words on an archway leading to the churchyard. Over time, two things happened: the church lost its passion for Jesus and His gospel, and ivy began to grow on the a...

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Can Americans Teach Others about Religion?

Author

Mark A. Noll

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Even more germane to the concerns of this book, it is important to remember how the American concern for enumerating Christian work can look to non-Americans. Kanzo Uchimura (1861-1930) was a Japanese...

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The EAC

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Philippians 3:14, Matthew 7:13-14, 1 Peter 5:8-9, Colossians 2:8, Psalm 1:1-3, Ephesians 4:14, Romans 12:2

Perhaps the most intense place to experience drifting is commonly known as the EAC, the East Australian Current. If you’ve ever seen the Disney Pixar film Finding Nemo, you’ve been exposed to the EAC,...

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What is the Gospel?

Author

Carl Medearis

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 1:16, Philippians 3:8-9, Colossians 1:27-28, Acts 4:12, 1 Corinthians 1:23-24, John 14:6

I recently visited a missions school at a large church in Waco, Texas, and decided to try a similar test in a class-sized proportion. “Tell me,” I said to the group, “what is the gospel?” A young lady...

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Christians in Politics: Often Our Own Worst Enemies

Author

Jake Meador

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Though American Christians do have genuine opponents in the public square and in elite institutions, they have often been their own worst enemies, making disastrous political compromises and looking t...

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Religion: A Private Affair

Author

Peter Baelz

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So it is that in most Western industrialized countries church and society have lost their identity, religion has become more and more a private affair, and morality has become secular. This process af...

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Evangelicals Love Politics

Author

Nancy Pearcey

Keywords

Scripture

Micah 6:6–8, 1 Samuel 8:4–9, Jeremiah 7:1–7, John 8:36, Romans 12:2, Psalm 146:3–5

Nothing illustrates evangelicals’ infatuation with politics more clearly than a story related by a Christian lawyer. Considering whether to take a job in the nation’s capital, he consulted with the le...

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The Upside-Down, Strangely Beautiful Kingdom

Author

Russell Moore

Keywords

Scripture

Acts 17:6, Revelation 5:9-10, Galatians 3:28, Romans 8:17, Matthew 5:3

The kingdom of God turns the Darwinist narrative of the survival of the fittest upside down (Acts 17:6–7). When the church honors and cares for the vulnerable among us, we are not showing charity. We ...

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MKL’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail-a Short History

Author

Esau McCaulley

Keywords

On April 12, 1963, eight clergy—two Methodist bishops, two Episcopal bishops, one Roman Catholic Bishop, a Rabbi, a Presbyterian, and a Baptist—wrote a letter addressed to the citizens of Alabama. Thi...

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Living Faith Through Selfless Service

Author

Oscar A. Romero

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 53:4-5, 1 Samuel 17:, 1 John 12:24-25, Matthew 16:25, Psalm 116:15

Whoever seeks to avoid danger at all costs may ultimately lose the fullness of life, but the one who, out of love for Christ, dedicates themselves to serving others discovers a life that endures. Arch...

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Going to Congress

Author

Jon Meacham

Keywords

When [Abraham] Lincoln was running for the House of Representatives from Illinois, he was charged with being “a scoffer at religion,” wrote the historian William J. Wolf, because he belonged to no chu...

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Religious Faith in the Workplace? The Resistance May Not Be What You Think

Author

John C. Knapp

Keywords

More often than not, park-it-at-the-door thinking [about religious faith] has less to do with hostility to faith than with the avoidance of risk, for many employer’s fear that any hint of religion is ...

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The Way We Answer the Door

Author

Scott Bowerman

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The Rule of Benedict is a document that has ordered the life of Benedictine monks for 1500 years. That remarkable document, written by Saint Benedict of Nursia, instructs the monks in how they are to ...

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What Kind of Inquiry does this Ordering Policy Recommend?

Author

Gregg A. Ten Elshof

Keywords

When the movie The Da Vinci Code hit the theaters and the swirl of related controversy began to pick up speed, I decided finally to read the book so that I wouldn’t be found ignorant dinner parties. I...

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The World, a Definition by Eugene Peterson

Author

Eugene H. Peterson

Keywords

Scripture

John 2:15-16, Romans 12:2, Ephesians 2:1-2, John 15:18-19, James 4:4

The world, though, is protean: each generation has the world to deal with in a new form. World is an atmosphere, a mood. It is nearly as hard for a sinner to recognize the world’s temptations as it is...

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Has Religion been a Force for Evil in Human History

Author

Francis S. Collins

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 3:7-10, Isaiah 58:6-10, Micah 6:6-8, Matthew 23:27-28 , James 1:26-27, Psalm 146:7-9

A major stumbling block for many earnest seekers is the compelling evidence throughout history that terrible things have been done in the name of religion. This applies to virtually all faiths at some...

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Virtue Over Victory in Politics

Author

Justin Giboney

Keywords

Scripture

1 Samuel 24:10-12, Proverbs 16:8, Romans 12:17-18, Psalm 72:1-4, Micah 6:8, Matthew 5:13-16

When in conflict we should demonstrate that our public witness is more important than winning a political battle. This means that if our side has to do something unloving or corrupt to win, then it’s ...

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The Best-Known and Least Understood

Author

John R. W. Stott

Keywords

The Sermon on the Mount is probably the best-known part of the teaching of Jesus, though arguably it is the least understood, and certainly it is the least obeyed. It is the nearest thing to a manifes...

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What is a Christian?

Author

Bill Rodenberg

Keywords

Christians

Scripture

2 Thessalonians 1:3, 1 Peter 2:2, 2 Peter 3:18, Mark 5:19, Luke 14:23, Acts 1:8, Matthew 5:16, Luke 8:16, Philippians 2:15, Mark 4:1-20, Luke 8:4-8, Psalm 12:6-8, Psalm 91:1-2, Luke 8:39, 1 Peter 2:9, 1 John 5:13, 2 Corinthians 5:1, 2 Timothy 3:1-5

The word “Christian” has lost much of its meaning in our culture. It means “Christ in one.” As you communicate the Good News of Jesus Christ, this is what God expects of a Christian: He expects us to...

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Listening to God and Others

Author

Adam S. McHugh

Keywords

Scripture

Deuteronomy 6:4-5, Isaiah 55:3, Matthew 11:15, Luke 8:8, James 1:19-20, Psalm 46:10

The very first word of the Rule of St. Benedict, that famous text that has guided the life of monastic communities since the sixth century, is listen . I want for us to put listening back where i...

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Good vs. Bad Discipline

Author

James K. A. Smith

Keywords

Scripture

Hebrews 12:5-11, Proverbs 3:11-12, Psalm 94:12, 1 Timothy 4:7-8, Philippians 3:12-14, Matthew 23:23-24, James 1:22-25, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27

While formally or structurally speaking, there are mechanisms of discipline operative in both the convent and the prison, in both the factory and the monastery, more specifically, these disciplines an...

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