Christ and Culture

Friday, January 19, 2007 -- Week of 2 Epiphany -- Wulfstan of Worcester

"Morning Reflections" is a brief thought about the scripture readings from the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer according to the practice found in the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.

Morning Prayer begins on p. 80 of the Book of Common Prayer.
Evening Prayer begins on p. 117
An online resource for praying the Daily Office is found at www.missionstclare.com
Another form of the office from Phyllis Tickle's "Divine Hours" is available on our partner web site www.ExploreFaith.org at this location -- http://explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/index.html


Today's Readings for the Daily Office (p. 944)
Psalms 31 (morning) // 35 (evening)
Isaiah 45:18-25
Ephesians 6:1-9
Mark 4:35-41

One of the most perplexing things for Christians is the question of the relationship between our faith and the social order. As followers of Christ and believers in God, what should be our attitude toward the social, political and economic systems that we live with? We get different clues from scripture. Some portions of the Bible regard the cultural conventions as human inventions, inevitably fallen and enemies to the faithful. Other sections of scripture see social structures as legitimate authorities instituted by God.

One of the most famous discussions of this dilemma is the book "Christ and Culture" by Richard Niebuhr. Niebuhr suggests there are five theological traditions about the relationship between our faith and the world around us; all have biblical sources:

Christ Against Culture. For the exclusive Christian, history is the story of a rising church or Christian culture and a dying pagan civilization.

Christ of Culture. For the cultural Christian, history is the story of the Spirit’s encounter with nature.

Christ Above Culture. For the synthesist, history is a period of preparation under law, reason, gospel, and church for an ultimate communion of the soul with God.

Christ and Culture in Paradox. For the dualist, history is the time of struggle between faith and unbelief, a period between the giving of the promise of life and its fulfillment.

Christ Transforming Culture. For the conversionist, history is the story of God’s mighty deeds and humanity’s response to them. Conversionists live some what less “between the times” and somewhat more in the divine “now” than do their various siblings listed above. Eternity, to the conversionist, focuses less on the action of God before time or life with God after time, and more on the presence of God in time. Hence the conversionist is more concerned with the divine possibility of a present renewal than with conserversion of what has been given in creation or preparing for what will be given in a final redemption. (summary from Wikipedia)

Today we read ethical instruction from Ephesians. It would make a good debate to try to say which of Niebuhr's traditions is reflected in this writing. (Christ and Culture in Paradox? Christ above Culture?) The author seems to accept the conventional social structures as the context for the more important work of growing into maturity in Christ -- "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, ... and, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Slaves, obey your earthly masters... as you obey Christ; ...Render service with enthusiasm, ...And, masters, do the same to them. Stop threatening them, for you know that both of you have the same Master in heaven..."

150 years ago, abolitionists faced off against Christian slave apologists. It is pretty clear that throughout the biblical narrative slavery is regarded as a normative feature of society. Apologists could quote the Bible with many references including this one, "slaves, obey your earthly masters." Abolitionists quoted different passages about justice and equality. Today we hear Christian debate about whether the husband-wife relationship is one of dominance-submission or one of mutuality. Where we tend to dwell along Niebuhr's continuum will influence how we see it.

Lowell
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The Rev. Lowell Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, AR