There is an alarming tendency that I see especially among Evangelical Christians, but it also creeps in to Orthodox Christian Churches, and that is to become countercultural and even reject the culture of the societies they live in.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying to accept the culture as a whole.  Indeed, many things need to be rejected from modern Western culture such as the insistence on the worship of the will that characterizes Western thinking and affects the behavior of Westerners all the way from recreational drug usage to abortion. It is all related to the worship of the will, and this must be rejected.

Rather, I am talking about the adiaphora of Western culture. Adiaphora are things that are morally neutral in themselves.  These include the cinema, nonfiction and fiction books, and music.  I have met seemingly devout Christians (and young adults too) who have no clue about the culture around them.  They do not know anything about trends in cinema such as superhero movies or franchises, they do not know about famous book series, and they do not know currently popular musicians.  (On the flip side, I once met an older Orthodox Christian nun at an academic conference who knew what Pokemon Go was right after the game was released; she didn’t play it though).

But why are some Christian young adults so often seemingly unware?  They think this way they are keeping themselves pure from the world, but they are confusing isolation with purity.  Purity is a choice of living by rejecting certain aspects of the world; isolation is rejecting the entire environment.  Purity reflects the spiritual health of an individual; isolation does not.  To use an analogy, purity is like a person having a strong immune system, and for that reason rarely gets sick; it is the result of living in a community (of being in an environment).  The environment challenged and strengthened the immune system.  It revealed what was there.  But on the other hand, if one is isolated, then he or she can never get sick, but that does not tell us whether his or her immune system is strong or not. Purity is a mindset and the actions that come from that mindset.  This is why the Apostle Paul said, “To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience are defiled” (Titus 1:15).

The Early Christians: Cultural Engagement

If we go back to the past and see how Christians viewed culture and whether they interacted with their surrounding culture, we find a different attitude than today’s Christians.

Apostle Paul Preaching on the Ruins 

by Giovanni Paolo Panini, 1744

The Early Church Fathers had success because they were often trained in the cultural arts of their time. They had understood astronomy, music, literary composition, poetry, and the other fields of knowledge that contribute to art, and they used these arts in their prayers, preaching, and writings.

In the world of Late Antiquity, which was the world of the Early Church, a person’s literary style was praised on whether it imitated other classical writings while at the same time being original.  For example, St. Ambrose of Milan styled his book On the Duties of the Clergy (De Officiis) after the Roman statesman Cicero’s books On Duties (De Officiis) and On Friendship.

St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote his dialogue On the Soul and the Resurrection reminiscent in style of the dialogue titled Phaedo by Plato covering the last day of his teacher Socrates.  Even the book Phaedo circulated under the title On the Soul in the ancient world.

St. Augustine in his autobiography of The Confessions imitates the composition style of the Metamorphoses (known in modern times as The Golden Ass) of Apuleius.  St. Augustine’s book is godly and pure; the Metamorphoses is everything but godly and pure.

The early Christians imitated style, not content, and thus they preached Christianity to the educated and literate masses, and at the same time they shifted the focus of literature from structure to content moving the hearts of the Greeks and Romans to the higher things of life and of God.

But something must be noted as well.  By imitating style and producing high quality Christian spiritual content, these early Christian writers showed that they accepted the good things of culture and rejected the bad things.

Modern Christians: Cultural Monasticism

Western Christians often view monks as those who escape from the world.  To make a long story short, this is a misunderstanding, but I will not address it here.  However, if we follow that definition, the irony is that Western Christians have become cultural monks.  They have escaped from participating in the culture they live in, so while they still live in their societies, they are detached; they either reject everything or more often they accept everything (thus becoming hypocrites), but it’s rare when you find that intelligent Christian who sifts and sorts and truly engages with the culture around them accepting the good things and clearly rejecting the bad things without compromising his or her Christian foundation.

The Danger of Parody: Preparation for Destruction

Current popular Christian cultural works seem to be a parody of culture, and Christians themselves are not aware of it.

Examples include popular Christian books like those by prosperity Gospel preachers.  These books resemble self-help books and not Christian spirituality.  For example, talking about how to live a financially fruitful life will do nothing for the problems within one’s soul.  What would be interesting is to see a book of Christian spirituality that preaches about acceptance of one’s situation in life, cultivating self-mastery, learning how to be content in all things, and how to live a life of gratitude to God for the simple things in life.  That would indeed be Christian spirituality.

In the cinema and television, we often find Christian movies that are nothing more than poor imitations of mainstream movies.  What the early Christians did was not parody, but they produced original works using the style of the ancient writers.  Most modern Christians moviemakers imitate not only style, but they keep the plots of the movies more or less the same, except it is softened for a Christian audience.

True culture does not parody, but it creates original works within a framework of patterns and ideas. This is what the early Christian writers did.  They participated in culture and created original works within it.

Taking a movie and rewriting it from a Christian point of view is not culture; it is parody.  It is not lead to conversion; it leads to criticism, and it actually encourages Christians to seek the original work that the Christian parody was based on.  For example, modern “worship” sessions in Evangelical Churches often resemble heavy metal concerts or nightclubs.  Guitar solos, strobe lights, and beer do not belong in churches.  It is no wonder that right out of high school, young “devout” Christians get caught up in the nightclub scene.  Their churches prepared them for it.  They not only graduated from high school, but they also graduated from the introduction to the ways of the world given in their churches.

We Need a Renaissance of Christian Culture

While there have been many great writers who have produced original Christian works in the past 100 years such as G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien, we need a revival of wholesome, compelling, and beautiful Christian literature, music, and cinema.  We need to move away from the sentimentality (which is what characterizes Western literature today) and move into depth and communicating messages that will uplift the minds and hearts of those who read them.

Christian cinema seems to be a parody of mainstream movies, but what can we expect?  They don’t contribute anything new to culture; they reject it, and they present a version of “What if this was a Christian [movie, song, book]?”  Evangelical Protestant Christians do not have a history of engaging with culture, but only rejecting it.  It is the difference between imitation and mimicry.  When one imitates, then they use their own thinking and assimilate what is around them.  When one mimics, it is just mindless copying.  There is no thinking in it.  They have no framework in which to think about this.  I might note that the lasting Christian writers of the 20^thcentury were not Evangelical Protestants.  G.K. Chesterton and J.R.R. Tolkien were Catholics; C.S. Lewis was Anglican.  All three were well read in the early Christian writers.

Occasionally, there are spots here and there that can be recognized as original Christian works. For example, the 1980s song “Kyrie Eleison” by Mr. Mister is an example of an original Christian piece of art produced within the patterns and ideas of 1980s musical culture even though the band Mr. Mister is not a contemporary Christian band.  Also (and this may seem counterintuitive to many), the Madea movies by Tyler Perry for the most part have strong Christian messages (especially the earlier movies) and are original creative works produced within the patterns and ideas of African-American culture as it relates to the larger American culture.

The Early Christian writers transformed the cultures around them through their original use of it (especially in their writings and their ability to have dialogues).  When this happened, Christianity slowly tilled the ground of culture and made it fertile ground on which to sow the seeds of the Gospel. This in turn led to the transformation of individuals, and they became Christians.

I may add that this transformation’s power is still there in our overall Western culture today.  The ideas of the dignity and value of the individual human being which has guided the formulation of law, the practice of medicine, and education is a result of the early Christians’ engagement with Late Antique and early Western European culture.  All one needs to do is look at the literature of the ancient world and the topics it dealt with and focused on, then look at early Christian literature and the topics it dealt with and focused on, then look at medieval literature, then early modern, and modern literature, and it becomes clear when and where the change of focus happens.

This is the legacy of the early Christian engagement with culture.  Think of what could happen if this spirit of engagement were to re-emerge today?  I’ll let you conclude that for yourselves.

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