So we’ve come to our last of the quadrilateral, activism.
Bebbington defines it as: the belief that the gospel needs to expressed in effort. I define it as: the belief that the gospel needs to be expressed in effort to make Christianity the predominant Culture, ridding the evils of any one else’s point-of-view.
Out of all 4 points of the quadrilateral, this one is probably the one that would brand me a liberal by our more conservative brothers and sisters, but I feel this needs to be said: We do not live in a Christian culture, and the former ‘Christian’ culture of Canada was of face-value at best. A culture war is an exercise in futility.
And there you have it. North-American Christianity, though far more prominent south of the border (though that seems to be changing), seems to be deadset on winning some cultural war against sex, homosexuality, postmodernism, religious plurality, and, it seems, the political left. All of these contribute to the downfall of society, or so I was to believe, had I listened to the late Jerry Falwell, or even Pat “Assassination’s cool with God” Robertson.
Don’t get me wrong. Some of these things are wrong. Some of these things aren’t bad, they are just reality. I’m not going to tell you which, but I am going to say what I think are the two things Christians do in response to culture that is bogus: wholesale condemnation, followed by a really crappy, ‘cleansed’ copy.
First off, the condemnation. I don’t understand how we can condemn a culture that is devoid of the Word for doing things against the Word? Yes, there are things that are bad that need to be brought to justice and renewed (television standards and practices), and there are things beyond redemption that we need to just condemn outrightly (abortion), but we are doing it in just the dumbest way possible. Scare tactics, guilt, and even outright hatred are not the ways of how Christians are to respond, let alone how Christ responded to things he that were wrong. Where is the love for our fellow man in saying “God hates Fags,” or “Abortionists are Murderers?”
Secondly, we really suck at creating an alternative. Contemporary Christian Music tends to be about 4 years behind realities tastes and flavours, not even mentioning how mediocre most of the talent is, and don’t even get me started on Kirk Cameron and his Left Behind movies (or for that matter, Tim Le Haye and Jerry Jenkins for coming up with those pieces of trash). We North-American Christians, by and large, seem to hate to be innovative or creative. What happened to 2000 years of Art History centred around Jesus? What made Christians hate good art so much that they would create all this garbage? For the sake of the Lord, make something decent.
Solutions: First of all, I think we need to cast off the ‘Christian’ label we have attached to everything in our God-fearing households, and replace them with socially-responsible products (which I’m pretty sure Jesus would appreciate it more than you may think). Second, we to interact and dialogue with our communities, to not feel better abour oursevles, but to serve the needs of those seeking out the kingdom, wherever they may be.
So that ends this cycle on Evangelicalism. I think I may write one more post on implicatiions, but we’ll have to see. I hope you’ve gotten something out of thise.
WK
This entry was written by , posted on December 2, 2008 at 7:05 am, filed under Activism, Christianity, Church and tagged Activism, Christianity, Church, Evangelicalism. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.