Recovering and Redeeming Our Culture
By Mary Jones
One definition of is "The sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings, which is transmitted from one generation to another" (Macquarie 1981). H.R.Neibuhr in Christ and culture (p.) outlines five ways of looking at the relationship of Christianity to culture - where Christianity is seen as separate and opposed to culture, where it has been absorbed into the culture and lost it's distinctiveness, where Christianity is seen as being superior to the culture, where there is integration with tension and lastly where Christ is seen as the transformer of culture. Colin Harbinson in his lectures and booklet on "The Arts and Cultural Restoration" suggests a way of approaching this transformation. He outlines God's original intention that human beings in relationship with him and his word would develop "cultural expressions that would reflect truth and beauty, while exercising his loving rulership in the earth" (p.4). But with the introduction of sin where the truth of God was exchanged for a lie and his glory for an image (Romans 1:23,25) culture became distorted. Harbinson ,in diagrammatic form, suggests a way of categorising spiritual dynamics that are there in every culture but in differing proportions. He identifies these dynamics as Natural, Redemptive, Demonic and Distorted (p6). Natural expressions are aspects of the culture that are amoral; Redemptive are ones that contain understanding or demonstration of Biblical truth whether people are conscious of this or not; Demonic expressions are those that have been affected by involvement with demonic powers; and Distorted expressions "no longer reflect God's original intention of His Creation (p6). He contends that in Cultural Restoration we should celebrate the Natural, affirm the Redemptive, oppose the Demonic and restore the Distorted (p. 7)
Attitudes to cultural heritage
However, as we come to look at cultures in this or similar ways we need to exercise care in our analysis as it is easy to come with our own cutural bias and distortion. The early missionaries often brought the Christian faith surrounded by Western culture . Before the days of anthropology and sociology it was not generally understood how much of the way that Christianity was lived out in the West was mixed with values and habits deriving as much from that culture as Biblical principles. Seth Newman describes the setting up of Salems in Ghana which were residential areas set aside for Christians around the church where new converts were encouraged to look down on and leave behind traditional culture and adopt Western dress, music etc (Nicholls 1991 p.72) Meeyun Chung in a paper Gospel and Culture discusses the significance of this in Asia under three categories: Orientalism which is approaching the East with Western eyes and a sense of superiority; Occidentalism which is the opposite, using Eastern ways of thinking again with an assumption of superiority; and a third way of Post Colonialism which advocates a meeting between subject-subject rather than subject-object and each cultural expression interpreted by it's own cognitive perspective. She is concerned with developing a unique Korean liturgical dance using traditional dance which will be informed by an understanding of the Bible from an Asian perspective.
These days there is more awareness of needing to allow each culture and people to apply Biblical principles themselves under the direction of the Holy Spirit, discerning what is valuable to retain from the culture and what needs to be modified or rejected. God has created enormous variety in the world around us. He loves variety and the many ways in which His eternal truths and commandments can be applied and expressed. What He desires is a unity of spirit and relationship not conformity of style.
Research also suggests that God has revealed himself in the origins of many peoples. If you go far enough back you usually find evidence of the One Creator God and in some cases there has been a tradition of stories that parallel many of the early biblical stories and prophecies that have prepared the people to receive the gospel (Richardson 1981).
