Week 3

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Week 3

Welcome!  Please help yourself to coffee and snacks  Please make a name tag for yourself  Please fill out the information card on the table  Please consider serving:

Sign-up to bring refreshments to a class

 As you watch the video clip, consider    

the following questions: What elements of culture do you see here? How is Pat Buchanan acting as a “Culture Maker?” How do we reflect on this speech 23 years later? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= pICypNXHKbg&list=PLC7628CDAE9 DCABF0 Start at 1:00

“Friends, this election is about more than who gets what. It is about who we are. It is about what we believe and what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as the Cold War itself. For this war is for the soul of America. And in that struggle for the soul of America, Clinton & Clinton are on the other side, and George Bush is on our side.”

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10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in power. 11 Put on the full armor of God,

his mighty so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place,15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

 According to the passage, who specifically is the

enemy? As opposed to whom?  What do we notice about the armor of God? Is it defensive or offensive?

“In a larger sense, it is this boundless compassion that has made him such a popular figure, even among non-Catholics. Indeed, here’s the delicious irony: Pope Francis is revered even by many atheists. The backdrop is that the Christian “brand” has suffered from culture wars, hypocritical televangelist blowhards and the sense that Christian leaders have spent more time condemning gays (whom Jesus never mentions) than helping the needy (Jesus’ passion). Some young people have gone so far as to avoid the label “Christian,” calling themselves followers of Jesus instead. It carries less baggage.” NY Times, September 24, 2015

Richard Stearns, president of World Vision, the evangelical aid group, cites that passage and says Francis’ writing should be required reading across denominations. “I have been deeply grieved by the damage done to the reputation of Christianity in recent years by Christians shaking their fists at the culture,” Stearns says. “Perhaps the shortest definition of God in Scripture is from 1 John 4:8, ‘God is love.’ Pope Francis is trying to show the world the simplicity of that revolutionary idea.” Deborah Fikes, of the World Evangelical Alliance, puts it this way: “As a U.S. evangelical who has been so disappointed in how leaders from my own faith tradition have lost sight of what an authentic Christian witness really looks like, Pope Francis is nailing it, and this is resonating with Catholics and Protestants, including evangelicals.”

 Pre-Constantine

 The Church on the margins  Service and sacrifice in the Church and wider

community

 The Era of Christendom

 The Church at the center of culture  Power and patronage imposing and supporting

Christianity

 The Modern Era

 The Church moving back to the margins  Examples of both service and sacrifice and struggling to

maintain cultural power and authority

 Selective withdrawal from

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politics and entertainment. Embraced radio and television. Avoid dancing, and movies. Focus on Dangers not Delights. Suspicion and condemnation of secular cultural goods.

 Carl F. H. Henry – The Uneasy

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Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism First Editor of Christianity Today Called for reengagement with issues of Labor and War. Francis Schaeffer founded L’ Abri and engaged with culture to examine its “worldview.” Emphasized analysis and critique not participation in culture making.

 Jesus Movement adopted

many of the “cultural forms” of the counter culture. (long hair, casual clothing, rock music)  “Why should the Devil have all the good Music?”  Copied and “baptized” secular music from rock, to rap to heavy metal.  Must have “Jesus quotient” in lyrics.

 Today many evangelicals are

avid consumers of “secular” culture.  Perhaps driven by a reaction to “unhip” fundamentalist ancestors.  Danger of seeing ourselves as “most human when we purchase something someone else has made.”

 Which of the four approaches to culture have you seen

most in your own life and in Grace Chapel?  Are you happy with that stance toward culture?  Fundamentalist Withdrawal  Critiquing Culture  Copying Culture  Consuming Culture

 Farmer  Essayist  Novelist  Poet  Cultural Critic and

Maker  Devoted to the care of local cultures, communities and landscapes

The collapse of families and communities—so far, more or less disguisable as “mobility” or “growth” or “progress” or “liberation”—comes from or with the collapse of personal character is a social catastrophe. It leaves individual subject to no requirements or restraints except those imposed be government. The liberal individual desires freedom from restraints upon personal choices and acts, which often has extended to freedom from familial and communal responsibilities.

The conservative individual desires freedom from restraints upon economic choices and acts, which often extends to freedom from social, ecological and even economic responsibilities. Preoccupied with these degraded freedoms, both sides have refused to look straight at the dangers and the failures of governmentby-corporations. The Christian or social conservatives who wish for government protection of their version of family values have been seduced by the conservatives of corporate finance who wish for government protection of their semireligion of personal wealth earned in contempt for families.

The liberals, calling for too few restraints upon incorporated wealth, wish for government enlargement of their semireligion of personal rights and liberties. One side espouses family values pertaining to temporary homes that are empty all day, every day. The other promotes liberation that vouchsafes little actual freedom and no particular responsibility. And so we are talking about a populace in which nearly everybody is needy, greedy, envious, angry, and alone. We are talking therefore about a politics of mutual estrangement, in which the two sides go at each other with the fervor of extreme righteousness in defense of rickety absolutes that are indefensible and therefore cannot be compromised.

Kindness is not a word much at home in current political and religious speech, but it is a rich word and a necessary one. There is good reason to think that we cannot live without it. Kind is obviously related to kin, but also to race and to nature. In the Middle Ages kind and nature were synonyms. Equal, in the famous phrase of the Declaration of Independence, could be well translated by these terms: All men are created kin, or of a kind, or of the same race or nature. . . (Jesus and the woman caught in Adultery) In the Gospels the sinfulness of all humans is assumed. It is neediness that is exceptional, and in Jesus’s ministry need clearly takes precedence over sin. His kindness is best exemplified by his feedings and healings with no imputation at all of deserving.

But the wealth of this idea of kindness is not exhausted by kindnesses to humans. It is far more encompassing. From some Christians as far back as the twelfth century, certainly from farther back in so-called primitive cultures, and from some ecologists of our own time, we have the idea of a great kindness including and binding together all beings: the living and the nonliving, the plants and animals, the water, the air, the stones. All ultimately are of a kind, belonging together, interdependently in this world. From the point of view of Genesis I or the 104th Psalm, we would say that all are of one kind, one kinship, one nature, because all are creatures. Much happiness, much joy, can come to us from our membership in a kindness so comprehensive and original.

“Owning fewer things has resulted in things no longer owning us.” “The earth was designed to sustain every generation's needs, not to be plundered in an attempt to meet one generation's wants.” “The "consumer lifestyle" demands an enormous amount of work, worry, strife, and struggle, while instilling a deep sense of longing and discontent.” “The problem today is not one of nature worship; … it is the worship of all things made by human beings.” From Serve God, Save the Planet.

 To take away from today’s conversations:  What attitudes toward culture do you most frequently

display? Do those need to be changed?  Do I think/believe I can influence culture?  Is God calling me to be a culture-maker?