One of our small groups in the congregation is reading the now classic by H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture. Niebuhr leads the reader through a variety of options as regards the position of the Christian and Church in relation to culture. Do you define yourself as over and against culture? Accommodating to culture? Equivalent with culture as a kind of doorstop? Alongside culture in most regards unless there is a contradiction? The moral nerve of culture? The transformer of culture?
Today we might ask other questions of that relationship, for instance redefining our notion of how God is involved in the world.
Most of all Christ and Culture holds a mirror in front of us and asks us to engage in some self-reflection. Do we have an easy relationship without surrounding culture, hardly noticing the difference between, say, popular values and the way described by Jesus? Do we construct an adversarial relationship to the surrounding culture, as though God is not somehow there anyway? Are we mostly waiting for openings to shed light to the all too frequent darkness? Is there enough courage to challenge prevailing cultural norms, calling them into question?
Twenty five years ago Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon answered this question with their book, Resident Aliens. They insisted that the answer was remaining in the midst of culture while recognizing that a Christian will always be an alien there. They rejected isolationism and they rejected simple minded accommodation. Be in the world but know to whom you belong and what truly grounds you.
To be a Christian in the world is to know that the world was created by divine love and pronounced good. To be a Christian in the world is to know it is often too broken to unmindfully buy its definitions of the good life. To be a Christian in the world is to never settle for the present way of things instead of a future vision of what can be.
