Watching the English do Religion

Kate Fox, in her book Watching the English (Hodder, 2004, pp 353-357), offers a fascinating account of the ‘rules’ underlying English behaviour.  The book is full of witty and insightful observations.  After all, Fox writes as a trained anthropologist (which she defines as a being a professional ‘nosey parker’).  She talks engagingly about how we English converse about the weather, the way we approach humour, the rules that govern our behaviour regarding driving, work, dress, sex, and so on.

‘Religious’ rules are subsumed under the heading of ‘rites of passage’.  This, she says, is because ‘religion as such is largely irrelevant to the lives of most English people nowadays.’  All that remain for most people are the rites connected with ‘hatching, matching, and dispatching’.

The Gospel – its Content and Communication 1

J.I. Packer has a helpful article that explores this topic with cross-cultural evangelism in mind.  Here’s the first part of my summary.

Three preliminary thoughts:-

1.  The communication of the gospel must be determined by its content.  The content includes a diagnosis of the human condition, value-judgements on the life that is, and the life that might be, lived, and a call to respond in radical commitment.  Now this content must be verbalised, and it must be preached (i.e. explained and applied).  Such media as instrumental music, pictures, sculpture, or dance may reinforce the message, but only preaching can communicate it.  Nor can the theologian take the place of the ambassador.  Heb 1:1-3 describes God’s Son as a preacher even before he is described as as priest, sacrifice and mediator.  This is borne out by the Gospels themselves, which present him first of all as preacher of the Gospel of the kingdom (Mk 1:14f; Mt 4:17, 23; Lk 4:16-21; Jn 3:3-15).  So, preaching must continue as a main activity of the church, and the manner of the preacher must back up his matter.

Dig Those Plausibility Structures

D.A Carson has a helpful comment on ‘plausibility structures’ – patterns of thought that are taken for granted within a given culture – and how these change over time:-

As western culture progressively drifts from its Judeo-Christian heritage, new challenges to accurate and forceful communication are erected. It is sometimes helpful to think in terms of ‘plausibility structures’. A plausibility structure is a social structure of ideas that is widely taken for granted without argument, and dissent from which is regarded as heresy. For a long time the plausibility structures of our culture were in large measure Christian. It was widely accepted, without debate, that there was a difference between right and wrong and between truth and error; that human beings have been made by God and for God, who will one day be our Judge; that God sets the rules; that he sent his son Jesus. Even if people were a little fuzzy as to who Jesus was or what he did, these were among the ‘givens’. Today, however, as empirical pluralism develops, there are fewer and fewer plausibility structures in most western nations, but the ones that remain are tenaceously held. And these are anything but Christian: no religion is superior to any other religion; God exists primarily for my satisfaction and fulfilment; God is so much a God of love it is unthinkable that he could be angry; all religions say much the same thing anyway; religion is not a matter of objective truth but of subjective faith.

Carson, in When God’s Voice is Heard (eds Green & Jackman), 153f

Harvest – God’s Part and Ours

John Stott tells the story of the cockney gardener who was showing a clergyman the beauty of his garden, with its herbaceous borders in full and colourful bloom.  Duly impressed, the clergyman broke out into spontaneous praise of God.  The gardener was not very pleased, however, that God should get all the credit.  “You should ‘have seen this ‘ere garden,” he said, “when Gawd ‘ad it to ‘isself!”  He was right.  His theology was entirely correct.  “Nature” is what God gives us; “culture” is what we do with it.  Without a human cultivator, every garden of field quickly degenerates into a wilderness.

Usually we emphasise the indispensabioity of God’s part.  We sing

We plough the fields and scatter
The good seed on the land,
But it is fed and watered
By God’s almighty hand.

The opposite, however, would be equally true.  We might sing instead:

God plants the lovely garden
And gives the fertile soil,
But it is kept and nurtured
By man’s resourceful toil.

Stott, New Issues Facing Christians Today, 193.

Christ and Culture

How are we to understand the relationship between Christian faith and the world in which it is to be believed and practiced?  Over 50 years ago, H. Richard Niebuhr, in his Christ and Culture, outlined five approaches to culture in Christian history.  These still provide a helpful framework today:-