Is it possible for the Church to be culturally relevant? Should it be attempting to redeem the culture? Or are these questions a symptom of deeper problems in the lives of Christians?
I have been hearing that we must 'engage the culture', 'redeem the culture', be 'culturally relevant', along with many other catch phrases. These are common both in conservative and liberal elements of Christianity. Often, this is followed by encouraging people to become active in the entertainment industry, politics, and other similar areas. However, is this truly effective?
There are many problems with Christians and the church attempting to stay culturally relevant. These include the introduction of non-biblical elements into teaching and preaching, the drawing of analogies that have nothing to do with Scripture or the Christian life from strange sources, the dilution of doctrine, and the erosion of Christian values.
Most Christian denominations have been attempting to remain 'relevant' for more than 100 years. It started when the certain theologians started to embrace a skeptical outlook on Scripture and embracing the principles of German philosophical criticisms of Christianity. These lead many to start questioning the inspiration of Scripture, the allegorical interpretation of most passages, and the critique that the Bible was not scientifically or rationally acceptable.
This liberalizing trend continued into the late 1800s with the advent of the "Social Gospel" which stated that the Gospel was to bring about concern for all mankind, the advancement of the social welfare, aiding the poor, and many other things. While these are good, those who promoted this new "Gospel" chose to ignore the doctrines of sin and the redemption from that sad state. This lead to many becoming involved in 'Christian Socialism' in Europe and America. This used Christian principles to attempt to eliminate poverty, inequality, and other 'social sins'.
We have the adherents of these teachings with us today. Many of them are located in the Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopal/Anglican, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches. They are easily seen by their emphasis on poverty, inequality, ecumenicalism, little emphasis on redemption from sin, and a lack of interest in Biblical doctrine or condemnations of sin. Churches, preachers, and minsters that promote same-sex unions, do not condemn abortion, question the authority of the Bible, and wish to make the Bible gender-neutral (and some Methodist and Presbyterian organizations the trinitarian understanding of the Godhead as well).
On the Evangelical/Fundamentalist side of the equation, the questions were not concerning authority of Scripture, but rather as the world began to change their modes of dress and entertainment, they changed their standards to match that of the culture, thus in the early 1900s television, movies, cut hair, immodest apparel, and make-up were all preached against. During the 1920s, as young women began to shorten sleeves, hem-lines, cut their hair, wear make-up, attend movies, and eventually embraced the television as well.
During the 1940s, this began to affect the Holiness/Pentecostal denominations/organizations that were formed during the late 1800s and early 1900s and which were not involved in the fundamentalist/progressive controversies. The church of the Nazarene suffered a split in 1958 over these very issues among others. The Pentecostal Assemblies of the World and the Assemblies of God both began to change during this time, and the Church of God followed in the 1970s. Many of these no longer believe that there is a necessity to look any different from the world.
This has lead to the trends with televangelists becoming a laughing stock in society, and preachers being concerned solely with financial wealth and material gain. Some of those who were involved with these scandals were the Bakkers, Swaggert, Roberts, Robertson, among others.
This has also lead to them trying to find celebrities, actors/actresses, singers, and musicians in the popular culture to be role models for their children. They attempt to find 'Christian themes' in various movies and television shows (regardless of the dubious moral content), and popular secular music. Further, this pursuit of cultural significance has lead them to 'modernize' the church services for young people to include, moving lights, video clips, themes from popular songs, books, television, and movies.
The end result is that rather than being more relevant, they make themselves of less relevance. Why should people attend a church service that sounds, and looks like a rock concert when they can simply attend the real thing? Thus, these churches give their children a taste for the world while inoculating them to the truths and principles of Scripture.
This leads to the question, should the Apostolic/Pentecostal churches pursue this course of cultural relevance?
The answer must be a firm and solid, "NO!!"
Rather than attempting to be more relevant and culturally accommodating, we must rather be confrontational. I am not meaning that we should be mean, hateful, argumentative, cruel, vengeful, and intentionally abrasive. We must remain kind, gentle, yet firm when taking opposing the ungodly culture. Jesus and Paul did not attempt to be culturally relevant, nor did they attempt to directly change the culture of their day. Rather they sought to draw men, women, and children away from the culture. This is the only way to be relevant and change the culture.
Romans 12:1-2 says, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." John said that we are not to love the world or the things that are therein, because that is enmity against God.
Let us then put aside the desire to be relevant and conformist. Let us rather aspire to pull souls from the culture and see them transformed to be into the image of Christ.
