intersect

Christ and Culture Revisited:  Carson, Don. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2006; paperback 2012. 243 pages; includes bibliographic references & indexes. It's hard to think of a more well-known book on the relationship between faith & culture than Richard Niebuhr's 1951 book, Christ And Culture.  In this work, Niebuhr outlines 5 possible approaches to the relationship between, well, Christ and culture. Briefly, Niebuhr's categories are: Christ Against Culture; Christ Of Culture, Christ Above Culture; Christ and Culture in Paradox; and Christ Transforming Culture. Given the widespread influence of Niebuuhr's work, and given the ever-present tension between faith & culture that the church finds itself in, Don Carson, in his 2006 book Christ & Culture Revisited  revisits Niebuhr's project and offers his critique, followed by a helpful alternative approach to connecting faith and culture. Since this isn't a review of Niebuhr's work, but of Car...

What role do Christians have in building and shaping our culture? The beginnings of the answer to this, at least for the Christian, can be found on the early pages of the Old Testament. Genesis 1 & 2 recount with great literary beauty the origins of the universe. While there has been much debate (particularly over the last 100 years) on the question of literal vs. poetic interpretation, the main message in these early chapters is the carving out of a worldview. Over against many other pagan traditions (Egyptian, Babylonian, Chaldean, to name a few), the Hebrew scriptures detail a different cultural narrative. It is no small detail that, in the words of Eugene Peterson, "God shows up as a worker" at the outset of human history. God is the original culture-maker. God is the original engineer, architect, designer, carpenter, decorator, composer, biologist, chemist, and arborist. Centuries after creation, the Psalmist would observe that "the heavens declare the glor...

I wrote in an earlier post that culture is a way that we express our shared narrative. The elements we often think of when we talk about culture -- music, sports, art, food, technology, and the like -- are in themselves not culture. They are, rather, a way that we give a voice to the narrative that that hold a group of people together.  But what is the narrative? What do I mean when I link culture to a narrative? A story often holds in tension what is, and what ought to be. Stories offer windows into the world as the author wishes it to be, or they hold up mirrors, exposing what is missing in the world as we experience it. Virtues -- courage, sacrifice, love -- are often held in tension with what is: fear, selfishness, rejection. The conflict of the narrative raises the question: What ought the world to look like? Will righteousness win, or will evil triumph? How will the wounds of that world be healed? So too, we must make sense of the world around us -- and this becomes...

Billy Graham (second from right) kneels with other members of his crusade staff on the lawn of the White House, July 1950 This now-famous photograph of Billy Graham, and his associates, was taken shortly after the young (and, as Graham himself would later admit, "naive") met for the first time with President Harry Truman. Asked by a reporter what had taken place in the Oval Office, Graham shared with the press that he and his associates had prayed with the President. The reporter is said to have asked for Graham to re-create the pose -- and so Graham, Jerry Beaver, Cliff Barrows, and Grady Wilson obliged -- and the above photo is the result. Truman was reportedly angered by what he judged to be an exploitation of the visit for personal gain by the evangelistic team, and, it is worth noting, Graham later apologized for his error. But this photo lives on, perhaps because it marked the beginning of a new era in the intersection of faith and public culture. In their insig...

Lynden, Washington, is nestled in northwest Washington state, about 10 miles south of the Canadian border. This town is as "Anytown-USA" as it gets: family farms rolling from the edge of town to the horizon; each front lawn is precisely trimmed -- a point of pride for each homeowner; church steeples peak up among the treetops and buildings; the Stars and Stripes proudly emblazoned from the front porch of homes and businesses alike. Main Street is the heartbeat of the community; Dutch Mother Restaurant is a gathering place where local retirees meet each morning to catch up on local news. The Lynden Bakery is a favorite place for children, the elderly, and everyone in between to enjoy a cup of coffee and a warm pastry. And at the far end of Main Street is a small hotel made to look like an authentic Dutch windmill. Lynden, you see, is a Dutch town. Were you to flip through a rolodex of residents, you'd find that the number of last names beginning with the letters A through ...

65 miles northwest of Kyiv, Ukraine is the town of Borodyans'kyi. On the outskirts of this town is camp that, I'm told, was once used as a retreat center for former Soviet bureaucrats. Families of high-ranking government officials and their families would be rewarded with a week away in a camp-like setting. While some of the dormitories have been constructed post-Soviet Union, many of the buildings on campus date to the Soviet era, and the architecture harkens back to the Cold-war era. Walking through the grounds feels partly like a stroll through nature, and partly like exploring an eerie ghost-town: Some of the images captured on a recent visit -- I enjoyed wandering the grounds, exploring the old and the new, the natural and the man-made. The building on the middle row, far-left serves as the temporary quarters for the Evangelical Reformed Seminary of Ukraine. Today, the camp has been repurposed as a camp and retreat center, playing host to a variety of groups. While ...