IS THE CHURCH AGAINST MODERN CULTURE?

SEPTEMBER 23, 2007

Is the Church against today’s culture, which has become highly secularized and seems sometimes opposed to Christianity? Does she consider it irrelevant or an obstacle to people’s well-being and freedom? Does the Church view today’s society as pagan and Godless? Does the Church find more to condemn than to approve in the way Americans live?

A little over fifty years ago, the well-known Protestant scholar from Yale University, H. Richard Niebuhr, wrote a widely acclaimed book that is still held in high regard: Christ and Culture. In it, Niebuhr proposed that over the last two millennia, the Church has taken one of five stances toward the culture of a given time and place:
- The Church has been in tension with culture;
- The Church has been against culture;
- The Church has stood above and beyond its host culture;
- The Church has transformed culture; or,
- The Church has mirrored its culture.

According to Niebuhr, if one surveys the various historical epochs and cultures of the last 2000 years, one will find one of these five stances prevailing during each or them.

Perhaps the deeper reality is that all five stances simultaneously represent, to one degree or another, the position of the Church in relation to the culture of every time and place, for the Church is neither completely alien to nor perfectly at home in any culture. If we define culture simply as the cluster of ideas a people has about who they are, what life is, and what has meaning, value and importance, we can say there are always noble and worthy elements which the Church lauds in every culture. At the same time, every culture is always in need of refinement involving some sort of purification and enlightenment.

What I suggest is that the Church is always countercultural, but by this I do not mean the Church is always against culture. Since the Church is for people and for life, the Church is against anything in culture that is harmful to them or that diminishes or destroys their dignity or life – spiritually, mentally, emotionally, or physically.

I use the word countercultural in the sense that the Church always offers an alternative to any prevailing culture. Just as today’s secular culture offers one set of promises for what will bring happiness and fulfillment, one set of claims regarding what is true and meaningful, and one set of values to guide life’s choices, the Church makes a “counter offer.” That is, the Church counters what every culture offers with an offer of her own.

The Church says, in effect, “Do you want to be everything you can be? Do you want to attain deep, abiding happiness? Do you want to live with a clean conscience, so that you can know self-respect, inner peace, and freedom from the remorse and secret shame of guilt for past sins? Do you want to live life to the hilt? Do you want to be consumed by love with a perfect, faithful lover? Do you want to break free of the monotonous and the trivial, penetrate life to its core, and spend your time on the ultimate experiences available to human beings in this life?

You know what your culture offers you. You know what it has done for you and to you. The Church’s counter offer is a life that is an adventure from the word go. It is a life of discipleship of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, a life spent following him, imitating him, being with him, and letting him lead the way, letting him give you untold spiritual riches, invading you with his peace and love. If you live the Christian culture, you will find that the Lord makes no false promises and He never leaves you disappointed.

This is what the Church offers: to follow Jesus Christ, to adhere to his teachings, to imitate his example, is to live a life of ultimate meaning, because Jesus alone among all human beings lived the full life. He alone lived life at its deepest core. He alone lived every moment with utmost purpose. He alone tasted life’s ultimate rewards. He alone was fully human, because he was without sin, and sin always makes us less human. Jesus was the ultimate countercultural figure, and the name he gave the countercultural movement he started was “Church”.

Jesus said, “I did not come to condemn the world but to save the world” (Jn 12:47). So also with the Church. The Church does not seek to condemn any culture, but to allow the light of Christ to enter it, that culture may be purified of whatever in it is not godly or truly human, so that Christ’s will – that all possess life – be fulfilled.

+Bishop Raymundo J. Peña

last updated 05-Jun-2008 9:48 sitemap