Is there a "Christian culture"?

The idea of what a truly “Christian culture” would look like is interesting. Andy Murray and I were talking about this a little last week. Is there a culture that would tie, for example, a 10th century Christian with a 21st century Christian? Should we speak, act, and dress like the first century Christians? 2nd century? 1st century Jews? 19th century English?

In part the question lies with how we define culture. It is a fairly flexible term, and so we need to be careful. In general, I would define it as a specific way of viewing, processing, and interpreting the world. This is a wide definition, and means that there are many, many cultures (national, city, state, corporate, generational… anything which has an identity of thought or worldview is a culture. Some cultural identities may fit into this definition which are not worth considering – some cultural identities will overpower others when they overlap (some are more important then others). For example, when I visited Kenya, it is obvious that there is a “Kenyan” culture. But at times this national culture is at odds with tribal culture, and it is questionable which one is more important (often tribal culture is stronger then the national one.)

I would argue that the visible effects and products of culture are not themselves culture, but they do reveal culture. They reveal the values and thought pattern of that culture. Products might be dress, or governmental policy, or food, etc. It can be many, many different things.

I think there is a distinct culture that ties Christians because being redeemed includes a different/changed way of thinking. There is not one specific way to dress for true Christians over the past 2,000 years. I think this has something to tell us about Christian culture – why is that? Why does the New Testament give so little space to specific rituals to define Christians? It does not tell us how to dress except to tell us to dress modestly.

True Christian culture is defined by Christ, and the mind of Christ. To think like Christ is to draw attention away from ourselves and toward Christ. I think we need to ask the question of what it is that we want to point people to, and what will point them to that. What does Jesus care about in culture? What doesn’t He care about? Christians don’t seek to be different for the sake of being different. We are different (salt and light) to shine the glory of God and His gospel to the world (Light on a hill). Being purposefully different from culture (counter-culture) in other ways runs the danger of shining the spotlight on ourselves and not on the gospel. The interesting thing is that to avoid this, we need to know the culture we are in – and the better we understand it, the better we can pick out those things which will shine a spotlight on us, and those things which will shine a spotlight on Christ and the Gospel.


In His Grace,
Josh