The Cultural Handicap

One of the biggest issues facing the church today is cultural engagement. How should the church engage the culture around it? What does being the “light of the world” mean (Matt 5:14)? These questions are asked on a personal and corporate level.

How can I, as a Christian, witness to the world around me?
How can we, as a church, witness to the world around us?

These are excellent questions, and to be honest, they should be a question that burns in your brain constantly in these times. With some denominations going so far as to host drag shows in church,¹ the difference between Christianity and the rest of the world currently looks more like a blur than a line. But this blurred distinction is not a recent development. The effects of the Cultural Handicap are only really being felt recently, but the handicap itself has been around for quite a while. While preachers call for Christianity to influence the culture’s view of justice, equality, or morals, we must remember the church has been crippling itself for years. Every single major denomination in the United States has been actively subverting itself in the cultural mandate. To see how the Cultural Handicap works, we will dive into the stickiest subject of all. Race.

Resolutions on Racism

To start, we will first examine what denominations have to say about the subject of race. I find it odd that it is so easy to find a denomination’s statement on race, versus something like their requirements for communion, but I digress. When looking at these statements, the most important thing to notice is not what they have to say about race. Churches should not be preoccupied with race as a physical attribute. Instead, what each denominational statement has to say about ethnicity, or culture. To start, we will look at the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).

“…Therefore, be it RESOLVED, That we, the messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention, meeting in Houston, Texas, June 15-17, 1993, express our gratitude to God for his reconciling grace, and reaffirm our intention to love our neighbors as ourselves, denouncing in strongest terms every expression of racial and ethnic prejudice, discrimination, and hatred…”
SBC 1993 Annual Meeting, “Resolution On Racial And Ethnic Reconciliation”²

While loving our neighbor as ourselves is an essential part of the Christian life, I struggle to understand how this correlates to “denouncing ethnic prejudice”. Surely, a Christian should be able to look at a culture and exercise discernment within it? But the SBC is not alone in equating race with culture. Another denomination, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS), also has statements on racism. In a 53 page report, the LCMS analyzes racism by borrowing terms from the Encyclopedia Britannica.

“According to this definition, racism refers to the belief that organic, genetically transmitted differences (whether real or imagined) between human groups are associated with the presence or absence of certain socially relevant qualities or abilities that are determinative of people’s social worth and their value as human beings.”
LCMS, “Racism and the Church”, 1994³

Rather than attempting to define “social worth” or “socially relevant qualities”, the LCMS chooses to focus on the the value and indistinctive nature of human beings. The document does not end there. Rather than making the reader guess, they later affirm that:

“The Scriptures permit us readily to affirm particular cultural and ethnic expressions in Christian worship. Deeply problematic, however, is any claim
that one particular culturally shaped response to God’s goodness and grace is in and of itself superior to others.”
LCMS, “Racism and the Church”, 1994

How can a Christian be expected to create a godly culture when all forms of cultural judgment are erased? For a relevant example, should Christians truly not be judgemental of a drag queen performance during service? What method is in place for the discerning Christian to identify morally degenerate cultural behaviors?

The last denomination to note is the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA). This denomination has has much to say about racism over the years, including repentance for segregation in the past. In 2018, the PCA produced a report to the general assembly. This report decided to use sociologists’ version of race.

“The word “race,” as used in this pastoral letter, is not a scientific classification; rather, in the language of one author, the term “race” is used to denote “a social phenomenon with a biological component” (Sowell, Race and Culture). That is, the term “race” not only pertains to the color of skin and other biological factors, but also may include the cultural factors, associations, and assumptions that we attach to certain races as well (M32GA, p. 436).”
Appendix V, “REPORT OF THE AD INTERIM COMMITTEE ON RACIAL AND ETHNIC RECONCILIATION TO THE FORTY-SIXTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN AMERICA”⁴

Once again, race appears to contain both a biological, and a cultural component. This appears to bridge the gap between the people that say “race is only skin deep”, and people that say “race is a social construct”. But with so many definitions of race, how can the Christian church even begin to engage in the cultural mandate?

The Immutable Civilization

With racial questions plaguing the church for years, you would think that they would have more sufficient answers. Despite years and years of statements denouncing racism, Christianity is simultaneously accused of promoting it. This paradox can be understood by the acknowledgment of two factors. First, is the undeniable liberal drift. The political left goes farther left, and degeneracy becomes normalized and eventually promoted by the culture over time. Not being racist is no longer sufficient. Instead, the culture must be anti-racist.

The second factor is the churches inability to distinguish between social, cultural, and physical attributes of race. By using the sociologists’ definition of race, the church gives itself a handicap. How can the church simultaneously believe that Christianity should transcend national differences (Galatians 3:28), yet also maintain there are no moral differences between them? I doubt any serious pastor would explicitly argue for the Incas’ child sacrifices, but to suggest that a Christian nation can’t argue against it is to deny any Biblical basis for morals. If ethnic differences are inherently neutral, speaking to cultural issues becomes impossible.

This stance also weakens the churches response to other important issues. The SBC, for example, felt the need to issue a clarifying statement on civil rights rhetoric being used to promote sodomy. In this statement, they clarify that marriage is not a “social construct.” They further acknowledge that “… homosexuality does not present the distinguishing features of classes entitled to special protections, like the classes of race and gender, we acknowledge the unique struggles experienced by homosexuals in some parts of society…” ⁵

Race appears to jump from being a social construct with a biological component, to being an immutable characteristic of humanity’s culture. If race is simply an unchangeable feature, like sex, then the church’s response to racism should be simple and straightforward. Why isn’t it? Even now, we are seeing more and more churches attempt to blur the line between male and female. If the church believes that race is and isn’t immutable, why can’t gender be a social construct?

Going Forward

If the church is to take the cultural mandate seriously, the first step must involve removing the Cultural Handicap. One of the easiest and time-honored ways of doing this would be to remove the influence of sociology from church literature. Sociology, as a discipline, has only been around since the late 18th century. Many of it’s early influencers attempted to deconstruct human relations and how they should be governed. The result? Sociologists now consider civilizations and societal issues a science. It is no longer a discipline of history, or what is. Instead it attempts to determine what should be. An explicitly moral direction such as this is doomed to inadequacy and paganism without the guidance of God’s word.

“Science can analyse a pork-chop, and say how much of it is phosphorus and how much is protein; but science cannot analyse any man’s wish for a pork-chop, and say how much of it is hunger, how much custom, how much nervous fancy, how much a haunting love of the beautiful. The man’s desire for the pork-chop remains literally as mystical and ethereal as his desire for heaven. All attempts, therefore, at a science of any human things, at a science of history, a science of folk-lore, a science of sociology, are by their nature not merely hopeless, but crazy.”
G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

If Christianity is to ever come together in engaging the culture, we must first remove our man-made handicap. Christians are unable to call for a Christian society if they are unable to determine the morals of that society. Perhaps people will think the Bible contains more answers for cultural questions if the Bible is not “racist” just by answering the questions. As churches realize that their annual call for racial reconciliation has no effect, I hope they will start to realize why. I hope that churches as a whole start understanding the subversive nature of Critical Race Theory. I pray the Christian church is able to able to once again become the city on a hill that is not hidden.

There is no concept of “too late” for God’s people. Instead, we should remind ourselves that now means now. Perhaps you were created for such a time as this (Esther 4:14). In the cultural war, victory belongs to the Lord (Proverbs 21:30-31). The wise Christian must live and learn. Mistakes have been made, but the church does not end here. We must remove the cultural handicap, and engage the enemy with the weapons given to us by God. Why would we even consider the engaging the world without our greatest tools? 1 Corinthians 3:19 says that the wisdom of men is foolishness in the eyes of God. To properly engage the culture, Christianity must not use use the wisdom of the world, but instead rely on the sword that is sharper than any other. (Hebrews 4:12)

The Cultural Handicap

Resolutions on Racism

The Immutable Civilization

Going Forward

Sources:

Author Information:

Lutheran

PCA

Race

SBC

The Church

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