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self, with its imperishable quality of a gentle, quiet spirit, which is of high value in the sight of God." (1 Pet. 3:3,4) 4 There are many other instructions, all based on love, humility and submission.
There are many factors that contribute towards cultural identity. Music, literature, art, sport and social events are some that come easily to mind. So, in Australia, people like Banjo Patterson, Henry Lawson, John Farnham and Ron Barassi take their places alongside Pharlap and Ned Kelly as part of an Australian culture. But Christians around the world can also find examples of Christian heritage and culture among their own. For instance, the modern worship songs of Geoff Bullock, Darlene Zschech and Andrew Ironside are powerful cultural vehicles because they unite hundreds of thousands of people across many nations in a common awareness of God's love and power. Worship is a religious encounter, sure, but it's also a cultural experience.
Our baptism and communion services, our wedding services and funerals, our particular enthusiasm for life, our attitudes to social justice and our commitment to prayer and to the Bible as the Word of God are all cultural outworkings of our relationship with God.
I contend that, if we are truly committed to Christ, our Christian culture should be more important to us than our Australian culture. In the church I pastor, we have people from a wide variety of national and cultural backgrounds. Yet, in the church, what matters is the faith that we share in Christ. Our Christian culture is superimposed on our racial and national cultural background, changing in the process whatever else may have needed changing.
I believe that the Christian church urgently needs to come to terms with this concept. We need to bury forever the notion that we are a disorganised collection of religious organizations whose mandate is limited to the spiritual aspects of life. The world needs to see that we are, in fact, a people group with identifiable customs and attitudes. Only in this way will we be truly relevant in the multicultural world of the twenty-first century where religion will not be as respected as culture.
I have chosen to use the word "subculture" to describe my vision for the Christian Church because I believe it to be the most accurate. My own nation has become so diverse that the very suggestion of a prevailing cultural standard now seems absurd. Even the Church is so diverse that it becomes almost impossible to identify any cultural characteristics that would be commonly held across all its ranks. Yet, within the broad scope of Australian Christianity, there is a definite movement that crosses denominational barriers and presents easily discernible characteristics of lifestyle and culture. This movement is fundamentalist in nature and its coherency comes from its unconditional acceptance of the Bible as the Word of God and, to varying degrees, it's acceptance of charismatic phenomena and the workings of the Holy Spirit. To call this movement a culture would be an overstatement because it is never the prevailing culture in any town, city or region. Nor does it automatically supplant the cultural background of any individual. It is, I believe, properly referred to as a subculture, a unique people group that flourishes within other larger cultural groups.
One classic example of a subculture would be the hippies of the 1960's and 70's. They had distinctive beliefs, distinctive moral values (albeit very loose) and distinctive attitudes. They even had a distinctive appearance (long hair, beads, caftans, etc). They were recognizable as hippies, no matter what country they happened to live in. They shunned the establishment and tried to create their own little world. My vision for the Church is for something similar; a Christian subculture openly rebelling against the dominant values of an ungodly society and maintaining its own unpretentious lifestyle based on obedience to God. Thus we may have a Christian culture but we should be a Christian subculture. But did Jesus intend for his followers to adopt a cultural mindset? The terminology is unbiblical; is the whole concept therefore unbiblical as well?
Well, let's consider that question. Jesus came to a nation that was already steeped in religious tradition; yet he consistently taught his followers to live a radically different lifestyle. In the sermon on the mount, we read six times that he said: "You have heard it said... but I say to you..." He gave his disciples instructions concerning prayer, fasting, marriage and material possessions that effectively set them apart from the prevailing culture around them. He rebuked the hypocritical religious people of the day and warned his disciples that their righteousness must be greater. He gave them a "new commandment" (John 13:34) which, when obeyed, would identify them forever as his disciples. His teachings actually proceeded quite naturally from the Old Testament scriptures but no-one, least of all the religious leaders of the time, was living them. So Jesus commanded his disciples to live the life and then to faithfully pass his commandments on to others. (Matt. 28:19,20) These commandments were not so much about religious ritual as they were about attitudes and practical matters. In this way, we can see that there truly is a cultural element in his teaching.
The apostle Paul, as we have already seen, frequently admonished his readers to live a dramatically different lifestyle to what they saw in the world. (Rom. 12:2, 1 Cor. 11:32, Phil. 2:15, etc) In his evangelistic ministry, he was concerned to reach the lost for Jesus but, in his letters, his primary concern was for the church, that believers might understand the mystery of the Gospel and live lives worthy of that Gospel. Like Jesus, he emphasized very heavily the distinction between the Church and the world.
First Peter 2:9,10 are key verses that warrant reprinting in full. "But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy." (Emphasis mine.) This, to me, is the language of subculture, describing a highly distinctive people group living their religion in a generally hostile world. Remember, as we have previously mentioned, that this epistle was addressed to "the scattered people of God, now living as aliens".
But perhaps it is the apostle John who, in the end, has the last word. In 1st John 5:19, he says that: "We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one." Wherever we look in the New Testament, this separation between God's people and the rest of the world cannot be ignored. Luke even summarized Peter's day of Pentecost message with the words "Save yourselves from this perverse generation." (Acts 2:40)
The early church apparently understood this. The Lion Handbook on the History of Christianity quotes from a second century document called the letter to Diognetus.
"For Christians are not differentiated from other people by country, language or customs; you see they do not live in cities or towns of their own, or speak some strange dialect, or have some peculiar lifestyle.
"This teaching of theirs has not been contrived by the invention and speculation of inquisitive men; nor are they propogating mere human teaching as some people do. They live in both Greek and foreign cities, wherever chance has put them. They follow local customs in clothing, food and the other aspects of life. But at the same time, they demonstrate to us the wonderful and certainly unusual form of their own citizenship.
"They live in their own native lands, but as aliens; as citizens, they share all things with others; but like aliens, suffer all things. Every foreign country is to them as their native country, and every native land as a foreign country.
"They marry and have children just like everyone else; but they do not kill unwanted babies. They offer a shared table, but not a shared bed. They are at present "in the flesh" but they do not live "according to the flesh". They are passing their days on earth, but are citizens of heaven. They obey the appointed laws, and go beyond the laws in their own lives."5
The word wasn't used but this is a very early description of a Christian subculture.
Prayer, worship, water baptism, communion, study, hospitality, giving to the needy, healing ministry, "koinonia" fellowship, moral purity, honesty, integrity; all of these things tend to be seen as religious duties whereas, in fact, they should be seen simply as part of our culture as Christians. They are the things that unite us in a potent solidarity, despite other factors like nationality or skin colour. They are expressions of a rich Christian culture that transcends all other cultures.
People in Islamic countries are often amazed that we tolerate such things as pornographic movies in "Christian" countries like America and Australia. They have assumed that "Western" culture is Christian culture. It's up to us to show them the truth; that true Christianity exists in these countries only as a subculture.
I consider that the concept of a Christian subculture offers an answer to four extremely serious problems facing the Christian Church as we head into the twenty-first century. They are 1) the erosion of moral standards within the Church itself, 2) our failure to sufficiently impart our faith to our children, 3) the onslaught of humanism through international treaties and anti-discrimination policies, and 4) the ineffectiveness of much of our efforts in evangelism.
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