How Does Culture Affect the Church?

In our end-of-year surveys here at Jamestown, many offered topics/subjects that they would like to hear more about through sermons, classes, etc. These ranged widely from the family to philosophical questions to congregational issues and the list goes on. This is a wonderful situation to be in, one in which our members are hungry to learn and understand more and are willing to make those requests known to others so that they might help. So, kudos to you for this!

One such question is the subject for this article:

Question: “How does culture affect the church?”

Answer: “As much as we let it.”

Now, while I believe fully that this is the correct answer, the question deserves a more thorough explanation.

First, what do we mean by culture? Culture is defined as “the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization.” (Merriam-Webster) Culture finds its expression in clothing, music, food, politics, education, social trends, etc. This set of characteristics is one that exists at a moment of time, as culture changes at varying speeds throughout history. Even in American culture we have seen rapid changes over the last 100 years. Cultural changes have always affected Christians in varying ways, some benign and others malignant. We do not wear the same clothes we wore 100 years ago, nor do we eat the same food, listen to the same music, sing the same songs (although there are a few survivors), or even speak the same exact form of English. Like it or not, we are educated within a culture, we have jobs within a culture, and as we even find recreation within our culture.

To say the culture affects the church is nearly self-evident, but we must also define what we mean by “church”. The church, in the universal sense (i.e. all believers everywhere), has nearly always existed in several cultures at once. Initially the church dealt primarily with the culture of the land of “Palestine”, with its Jewish, Gentile, Greek, and Roman inhabitants, and their influences. Aspects of each culture would have affected the universal church at that point in time. However, the gospel message quickly spread to “even to the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1.8), and in each corner of that earth the culture was very different. Christians in Rome would have experienced very different influences from their culture than those in Jerusalem. Culture must be primarily understood to affect Christians in the local, or congregational sense, as the Gospel has circled the globe and faithful Christians serve Christ from Jamestown to Johannesburg. Each cultural context a congregation finds itself within is going to have its own influence on its individual members.

Even in the Scriptures we can see that cultural influences had a strong effect on Christians, and often in a negative sense. Consider the prevailing influence of idolatry in the early church, and how the eating of meat sacrificed to idols became a key issue to the Corinthian and Roman brethren (1 Cor. 8-10; Rom. 14). Certainly, this was an important aspect of the pagan idol worship that dominated Greek and Roman cities, and eating this meat was part of the culture of those places. “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”, the saying goes, and the challenge to Christians presented itself when what Greeks & Romans did was different from what Christ taught them to do. The same is true within our own culture (America 2024). Our culture has embraced post-modernism, wherein there is no such thing as objective truth and as such everyone’s opinion must be regarded as equally valuable, lest one be “cancelled” for their narrow-mindedness. Such a perverted thought system has led to perversion in other aspects of life, such as people identifying themselves as certain genders, races, or even ages. Popular religious culture has abandoned the requirement for authority of any kind higher than “what do we want to do?”. All these cultural shifts push against Christians who understand that Christ has called them not only to something different, but something higher.

This is nothing new to Christianity. Greek sexual culture was far more depraved (and more openly accepted) than even what is happening right now in America, and yet Christianity grew and flourished in Corinth, where the Christians were told not to associate with brethren who were “sexually immoral” (1 Cor. 5.1-13). If we think the American political system is broken and corrupt, study the Romans, and then reconsider Peter’s admonition to “Honor the emperor.” (1 Peter 2.17 ESV) and Paul’s to “be subject to the governing authorities” (Rom. 13.1). In Timothy’s culture it was popular for women to clad themselves in their wealth, and yet Paul wrote to Timothy instructing women not to adorn themselves with “braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness – with good works.” (1 Tim. 2.9). The point is that the principles of Christianity have always been under threat of infection from some sector of the surrounding culture, and Christians have needed to develop strong antibodies against these influences. It bears repeating that this world is under the dominion of Satan (1 John 5.19), and in such a neighborhood we can expect to have antagonistic neighbors to faith in Christ.

Now, let’s tie together our earlier statement: Culture affects the church as much as we let it.

To ensure that the surrounding culture does not move us as a congregation in a sinful direction, we cannot (like the Amish) wall ourselves off from the world in dire need of the gospel truth. Jesus prayed on behalf of his apostles, who would go out into various cultures: “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.” (John 17.15). Even Paul understood that isolation from the world at large was uncalled-for (1 Cor. 5.10). Instead, we must attach ourselves to an anchor, a standard, a set of truths and beliefs that are unchanging. Two verses later, Jesus provides us the key to remaining pleasing to God amidst a culture careening farther away from Him: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” (John 17.17, emp. mine).

Culture affects the church negatively only as far as we let it take us away from the truth of scripture. If we remain committed to biblical principles of sexuality, marriage, parenting, entertainment, attire, and others, the surrounding culture can rage against us all it wants, but we will be pleasing to God. Let the world slander and malign us for refusing their “enlightened” cultural corruption: That’s what we signed up for when we became Christians. Christ is worth it. (K.S.)

“For the time already past is sufficient for you to have carried out the desire of the Gentiles, having pursued a course of sensuality, lusts, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties and abominable idolatries. In all this, they are surprised that you do not run with them into the same excesses of dissipation, and they malign you; but they will give account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.” (1 Peter 4.3-5)

"Blessed are you when men hate you, and ostracize you, and insult you, and scorn your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of Man. Be glad in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven. For in the same way their fathers used to treat the prophets.” (Luke 6.22-23)