Christianity and Culture

I have regularly taught a graduate course on organizational culture for the last ten years. At the beginning of the course, I ask the students to create their own definitions of culture and then share them with the class. We quickly realize that while it is easy to describe certain aspects of a culture (such as how people greet one another, what food they eat, or how they seek entertainment), it is a challenging word to define.

Because I want to make information accessible, I summarize the conversation by telling them that culture can be defined as “That’s just the way it is around here.” And because I am a nerd, I also offer them this definition:

Culture is the shared internal experiences and shared external expressions of how a group lives together. The shared internal experiences include their desires, values, commitments, thoughts, and emotions. The shared external expressions include their verbal communication, nonverbal communication, heroes and heroines, ceremonies and rituals, stories and fairy tales, humor and play, metaphors, symbols, and physical artifacts (see Organizational Culture and Leadership and Reframing Organizations).

Culture is something we experience in our hearts and minds with others and is something we express with our words and actions with others. While my definition could be improved, it is flexible enough to be applied to someone’s family of origin, an organizational culture, a region of a country, a nation, or even broader cultural movements.

Even with these thoughts in mind, studying culture within a society is incredibly complex, not only because people study culture through various lenses (such as music, art, or morality), but because those who study culture carry their own beliefs about reality and how we should live together.

I divide the resources below into two categories. The first focuses on how we can simultaneously resist ungodly elements of culture and align ourselves with God’s will, while the second focuses on analyzing culture from a Christian worldview.

Living within Culture

The Church in Babylon by Erwin W. Lutzer (2): The author calls Christians to live faithfully in the world, which is characterized by idolatry (valuing people and things more than God) and hostility toward God himself, God’s Word, and God’s people.

Counter Culture by David Platt (2): The author explains how the Word of God shapes the way Christians should view and engage some of our world’s most pressing issues, such as poverty, abortion, and sex slavery.

Onward by Russell Moore (2 or 3): The author outlines principles by which Christians can pursue the kingdom of God within culture while not accommodating to culture.

*Cultural Engagement by Joshua D. Chatraw & Karen Swallow Prior (3 or 4): The authors explore contemporary issues in light of Scripture, and they conclude by offering principles by which Christians relate to culture.

Analyzing Culture

*Mama Bear Apologetics by Hillary Morgan Ferrer (ed.) (2): A book that helps parents to encourage their children to stand firm in the face of culture’s lies. The authors clearly analyze and explain various dimensions of culture, and you will benefit whether you are a parent or not.

Post-Christian by Gene Edward Veith Jr. (3 or 4): The author analyzes four aspects of contemporary culture (the nature of reality, the body, society, and religion) in light of a Christian worldview.

*Understanding Postmodernism by Stewart E. Kelly with James K. Dew, Jr. (3 or 4): Postmodernism is many things at once, but the authors clearly and concisely explore how, at its core, it is a philosophical movement that rejects the existence of objective truth and questions how we know what we know. The authors help us to sail our ship through the dangerous rocks of postmodernism and modernism alike. See also Kelly’s Truth Considered and Applied.

Everyday Theology by Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Charles A. Anderson & Michael J. Sleasman (eds.) (3 or 4): The authors help us understand how to interpret culture from a Christian perspective, analyzing specific cultural “texts” (or artifacts) and trends. See here for other books in the series.

The Intolerance of Tolerance by D. A. Carson (3 or 4): “Carson traces the subtle but enormous shift in the way we have come to understand tolerance over recent years, from defending the rights of those who hold different beliefs to affirming all beliefs as equally valid and correct. He looks back at the history of this shift and discusses its implications for culture today, especially its bearing on democracy, discussions about good and evil, and Christian truth claims” (my emphasis). See Carson’s The Gagging of God (4 or 5) for his analysis of philosophical pluralism, which is the Petri dish in which contemporary cries for tolerance grow.

Reclaiming the Center by Millard J. Erickson, Paul Kjoss Helseth & Justin Taylor (eds.) (4 or 5): The tentacles of postmodernism have spread far and wide. The authors confront the accommodation of evangelicals who have uncritically adopted some of its central beliefs.