Mohler Examines Why Culture Matters
Al Mohler, Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, recently released his first full-length book, Culture Shift, which examines a number of moral and ethical issues from Christian perspective.
Q. How do you define culture? Why does culture matter to Christians?
A. Culture is an entire set of customs, institutions, languages, habits, laws, and gestures that help the world make sense to us, so that we can share meaning with one another. Humans can’t get away from it, but culture can become invisible to us. American Christians have largely been blind to culture for this reason—we believe that what we think is what everyone else thinks. But the worldviews that are shaping our culture are foreign to Christians.
Q. Have evangelicals historically been champions of culture?
A. We’re informed by the Bible that our citizenship is in heaven, and it’s not temporal but eternal. Evangelicals know that [this] culture is passing away, so they have ignored it in the past. But it’s an act of Christian responsibility to engage culture from a Christian worldview, with a mission of reaching people with the gospel of Christ.
Evangelicals are on a spectrum from embedded to disengaged. We’ve been guilty of evangelical cultural imperialism—our own idea of manifest destiny: “What’s good for America is good for the Church,” and vice versa. But as Christians, we’re not ambassadors for a culture or nation, but for Christ. It requires us to be knowledgeable and informed and to engage with culture strategically.
Q. How do you define culture? Why does culture matter to Christians?
A. Culture is an entire set of customs, institutions, languages, habits, laws, and gestures that help the world make sense to us, so that we can share meaning with one another. Humans can’t get away from it, but culture can become invisible to us. American Christians have largely been blind to culture for this reason—we believe that what we think is what everyone else thinks. But the worldviews that are shaping our culture are foreign to Christians.
Q. Have evangelicals historically been champions of culture?
A. We’re informed by the Bible that our citizenship is in heaven, and it’s not temporal but eternal. Evangelicals know that [this] culture is passing away, so they have ignored it in the past. But it’s an act of Christian responsibility to engage culture from a Christian worldview, with a mission of reaching people with the gospel of Christ.
Evangelicals are on a spectrum from embedded to disengaged. We’ve been guilty of evangelical cultural imperialism—our own idea of manifest destiny: “What’s good for America is good for the Church,” and vice versa. But as Christians, we’re not ambassadors for a culture or nation, but for Christ. It requires us to be knowledgeable and informed and to engage with culture strategically.
Q. Explain your thinking on the difference between “hard” and “soft” America? Why is this important, from a Christian worldview?
A. There’s a lot we can learn from the secular analysts of culture. They’re observing the same things we are, but explaining it differently. Political analyst Michael Barone’s hard/soft paradigm has huge implications for us politically and socially. The hard refers to the American can-do culture; the soft refers to America’s coddling, therapy-based culture.
The Christian worldview is foreign to both. Hard is offended because Christianity says, “You can’t solve your most basic problem—sin.” The gospel of salvation by grace alone is foreign and offensive. And soft is offended because they recoil at the very notion of sin. “I have a problem? It must be someone else’s fault.”
So the Church must understand the challenge here. People’s worldviews are deeply shaped by their expectations of life.
Q. What do you see as the preeminent cultural issue facing the U.S. right now?
A. The greatest challenge to the Christian church in this cultural moment is to demonstrate what it is to be genuinely Christian people as the Church. Evangelicals have assumed that others in exotic cultures have foreign, strange worldviews, but that’s true of us as well. Every culture represents a challenge. We’re all fallen humanity.
Q. What lessons have we learned from terrorism?
A. One key thing is the reality of evil. Every generation has to be shaken out of unhealthy optimism and face the reality of evil. Christians have to understand the Fall, and the explanation that all humans are sinners.
The real threat of moral evil looms large with the threat of terrorism. We have no earthly security, no promise of earthly peace. All the frantic efforts of government can’t solve the problem of terror.
Ultimately, the reality of threat lives in the human heart, not in a terror cell. But we have complete assurance that God will be faithful to keep His promises.
A. There’s a lot we can learn from the secular analysts of culture. They’re observing the same things we are, but explaining it differently. Political analyst Michael Barone’s hard/soft paradigm has huge implications for us politically and socially. The hard refers to the American can-do culture; the soft refers to America’s coddling, therapy-based culture.
The Christian worldview is foreign to both. Hard is offended because Christianity says, “You can’t solve your most basic problem—sin.” The gospel of salvation by grace alone is foreign and offensive. And soft is offended because they recoil at the very notion of sin. “I have a problem? It must be someone else’s fault.”
So the Church must understand the challenge here. People’s worldviews are deeply shaped by their expectations of life.
Q. What do you see as the preeminent cultural issue facing the U.S. right now?
A. The greatest challenge to the Christian church in this cultural moment is to demonstrate what it is to be genuinely Christian people as the Church. Evangelicals have assumed that others in exotic cultures have foreign, strange worldviews, but that’s true of us as well. Every culture represents a challenge. We’re all fallen humanity.
Q. What lessons have we learned from terrorism?
A. One key thing is the reality of evil. Every generation has to be shaken out of unhealthy optimism and face the reality of evil. Christians have to understand the Fall, and the explanation that all humans are sinners.
The real threat of moral evil looms large with the threat of terrorism. We have no earthly security, no promise of earthly peace. All the frantic efforts of government can’t solve the problem of terror.
Ultimately, the reality of threat lives in the human heart, not in a terror cell. But we have complete assurance that God will be faithful to keep His promises.
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