Background on Cultural Christianity

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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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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 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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A Missional Hermeneutic

Author

Craig Van Gelder

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James Brownson describes what he calls a “missional hermeneutic” as observed throughout the New Testament: I call the model I am developing a missional hermeneutic because it springs from a basic obs...

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The Nicene Creed: A Rope to Hold On

Author

Glenn Packiam

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The farmers in the old prairie days used to prepare for a winter storm by putting up a rope between the house and the barn. They did this because they knew that in a swirling blizzard, even a brief di...

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Christian Faith Proved by it’s Fruit

Author

Keywords

The current context of cultural and religious pluralism magnifies this development. After the disintegration of Christendom-a historical topical apparatus that gave cultural pride of place to Christia...

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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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Six Factors Impacting our Understanding of Christ and Culture

Author

D. A. Carson

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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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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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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When the Church Isn’t so Welcoming

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 12:1–3 , Isaiah 56:3–7, Ruth 1:16–17 , Luke 10:25–37, Acts 8:26–39, Psalm 146:7–9

Lamin Sanneh, the African theologian who would be pivotal in the development of missional theology, was raised in an orthodox Muslim household in Gambia. He found himself drawn to Christianity after e...

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To Remember & Observe: Sabbath in a Jewish Home

Author

A. J. Swoboda

Keywords

We must begin by remembering. If you journey into a contemporary Jewish home prepared for Sabbath, you will likely encounter two candles lit by (more often than not) the woman of the home. On Friday e...

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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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The Image of a Lamb

Author

Derek Vreeland

Keywords

The image of a lamb doesn’t evoke feelings of confidence or strength. Sports fans will never hear an announcer say, “Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together to welcome the mighty Fighting Lambs!...

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Cultural Diversity: Baked into the Early Church

Author

Andrew Walls

Keywords

Scripture

Acts 15:null, 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, Ephesians 2:14-16, 1 Corinthians 9:19-22, Titus 2:11-14

Cultural diversity was built into the Christian faith…in Acts 15, which declared that the new gentile Christians didn’t have to enter Jewish culture…. The converts had to work out…a Hellenistic way of...

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Business Culture vs. Biblical Culture

Author

Adele Ahlberg Calhoun

Keywords

Scripture

John 17:1, Philippians 4:6, James 5:16, 1 Thessalonians 5:17, Matthew 6:6, Acts 6:4, Mark 1:35

It’s no secret that too many evangelical leaders are captivated more by business culture than biblical culture, spending more time absorbed in strategies and effectiveness and relatively little time i...

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The Mixed Bag of Human Culture

Author

Sandra L. Richter

Keywords

Culture

Regarding the average human’s awareness of their own culture, career anthropologist Darrell Whiteman has said that “it is scarcely a fish who would discover water.” This is a reliable statement. Human...

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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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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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What Keeps us from Experiencing Renewal

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Deuteronomy 6:4-5, 2 Kings 22:23, Isaiah 58:6-7, Psalm 119:105, Matthew 5:17-20 , Acts 2:42-47

There’s a quote by H. Richard Niebuhr that I believe is absolutely true. “The great Christian revolutions,” he argued, “come not by the discovery of something that was not known before. They happen w...

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Culture is like an Iceberg

Author

Brian S. Rosner

Keywords

Edward T. Hall likened the effects of culture to an iceberg. Some aspects of a culture are overt, in clear view above the waterline, so to speak. But most are hidden deep below the surface, forming th...

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Creating Christian Consumers

Author

Jay Y. Kim

Keywords

Scripture

1 Corinthians 1:22-25, Romans 12:2, 1 Corinthians 2:1-5, Isaiah 55:8-8, 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

I’ve served on staff at a few different churches throughout Silicon Valley for the last decade and a half, including a medium-sized church, a young church plant, and a multisite megachurch. At each, w...

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Set Aside Your Culture when Reading the Bible

Author

Jonathan Walton

Keywords

Rather than translating the culture, then, we need to try to enter the culture. When people want to study the Bible seriously, one of the steps they take is to learn the language. As I teach language ...

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Christian Culture Concerning Alcohol

Author

E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 20:1, Proverbs 23:31-32, 1 Timothy 5:23

In the excellent book, Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes , Brandon J. O’Brien shares a helpful illustration of how different churches deal with alcohol very differently: When I (Brandon) w...

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The Death of Christendom

Author

Tod E. Bolsinger

Keywords

In one generation, the place of Christianity within culture dramatically shifted as we experienced what theologians and sociologists of religion call the “death of Christendom.” Christendom isn’t Chri...

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Fitting In

Author

Michael Frost

Keywords

Today, the church in America seems to have traded in its mandate to be eccentric and aimed instead at an unconscious conventionality. Rural norms are too quaint, urban norms too dangerous, so the chur...

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A Post-Christian America?

Author

Phillip Yancey

Keywords

The United States is undergoing a marked change in its attitude toward religion, and Christians here face new challenges. When a blogger named Marc Yoder wrote about “10 Surprising Reasons Our Kids Le...

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Christianity at its Core

Author

Andrew Purves

Keywords

Scripture

John 14:6, Philippians 3:8, Ephesians 2:13, 1 John 1:3, John 10:10, Hebrews 1:3, Colossians 1:15-17

Christianity at its core is not about subscription to a theological system or the authority of a sacred text or ethical perspectives, although they are all important. Christianity at its core is about...

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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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What’s Unique about Christianity?

Author

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 2:1-4, Luke 15:3-7, John 8:1-11, Luke 19:10, John 1:16, Revelation 22:17

During a British conference on comparative religions, experts from around the world debated what, if any, belief was unique to the Christian faith. They began eliminating possibilities. Incarnation? O...

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