A Critique of Culture Shift by David W. Henderson
The church has a problem. The eternally relevant message with which she has been entrusted no longer readily finds a willing ear. According to Henderson, the solution lies in first understanding how our world thinks and then, beginning where people are at, bring them to see "the functional relevance for their lives of the actual relevance of our message". In high school speech classes, we were taught to "know your audience." As a careless high schooler, I didn't really care what she meant, but it eventually made sense (once I actually decided to think about it). You wouldn't use sock puppets to explain math to accountants; you wouldn't use in-depth power-point presentations to explain math to first graders. With this in mind, why do many Americans still try to talk about Jesus using the methods used thirty years ago? Why do we use Christian "jargon" to explain Christianity to those outside the faith? Henderson contends that modern American Christians must change their approach to sharing the faith in order to fit modern America. The pattern of Henderson's book is straightforward: he examines a particular aspect/mindset/value of modern Americans; he then gives ideas about how a Christian might share Words of Eternal Life with such an American. Henderson's writing is both straightforward and enjoyable. He gets right to the heart of the American mindset, then illustrates it with descriptions from scenes from popular movies, personal anecdotes, jokes, etc. In all, Henderson does the modern Christian a great service in writing "Culture Shift." Jesus told Christians to tell others about him ("Go, therefore, and baptize all nations...") and Henderson can help us along the way through this book
Henderson identifies six "cultural shifts" in the way our Western culture thinks and the values it holds. These changes have become observable in the last twenty years. These include a shift to a consumer mentality that has penetrated nearly every aspect of our lives, a shift to communication primarily by means of images rather than words, an obsession with self and personal needs, the virtual exclusion of God from the public consciousness, the predominance of a self-serving, ends-justifying, and crowd-conforming morality, and the politically correct but self-contradictory tolerance of all viewpoints as equally valid but uniformly meaningless as objective standards of truth.
However, aside from the apparent lengthiness of such an analysis, the emphasis of this book is how to practically respond to the secular mindset in the marketplace.
Moore investigates the attitudes, behavior, and perception of Americans regarding their respective individual sacred and secular lives. He is interested in the roles of popular culture and religion and in addition, how popular culture affected the shift in boundaries between sacredness and secularism, particularly how these practices shape American religion. We live in a complex society and social structure that is structured with norms and values that they themselves structure the way we interpret and interact with others.
In the essay "Worldviews in Conflict," Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey compare and contrast the ideas of Christianity and the views of today's society. Throughout the essay, they provide information about how the changes in society affect views regarding Christianity. Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcy's essay was written to contribute information so others could understand their views about the shifting cultural context and how it affects society's beliefs. The authors Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey's essay is credible because they both have knowledge and experience regarding the topic and researched various parts of the topic using reliable sources. Along with this essay, Charles Colson has written thirty books which have received much praise among the Christian community.
Whether people stood for or against the Reverend William A. Sunday, they all agreed that it was difficult to be indifferent toward him. The religious leader was so extraordinarily popular, opinionated, and vocal that indifference was the last thing that he would get from people. His most loyal admirers were confident that this rural-breed preacher was God’s mouthpiece, calling Americans to repentance. Sunday’s critics said that at best he was a well-meaning buffoon whose sermons vulgarized and trivialized the Christian message and at worst he was a disgrace to the name of Christ (Dorsett 2).
Hatch tells the reader that the religious communication changed in only two ways in the years following the American Revolution. The first way in which religious communication was that “clergy men lost their unrivaled position as authoritative sources of information (Hatch 125).” The second way in which the religious communication changed “was an explosion of popular printed material (Hatch 125).” This explosion of printed word changed Protestant Christianity. Exploiting of the press many pamphlets, tracts, books, songs and newspapers were published in order to extend the reach of Christianity and to battle other religions and naysayers. But even men of proper learning and character found it difficult to infuse elitist communication and gospel for the common man (Hatch 128). Elias Smith contented, “and all Christians have a right to propagate it, I do also declare, that every Christian has a r...
The United States is commonly thought to be on an inevitable march towards secularization. Scientific thought and the failure of the enlightenment to reconcile the concept of god within a scientific framework are commonly thought to have created the antithesis of religious practice in the rise of the scientific method. However, the rise of doubt and the perception that secularization is increasing over time has in actuality caused an increase in religious practice in the United States through episodic revivals. Moreover, practice of unbelief has developed into a movement based in the positive assertion in the supplantation of God by the foundations of science, or even in the outright disbelief in God. The perception of increasing secularism in the United States spurs religious revivalism which underscores the ebb and flow of religious practice in the United States and the foundation of alternative movements which combines to form the reality that the United States is not marching towards secularism but instead religious diversity.
In 1741 a Puritan preacher, Jonathan Edwards, delivered a sermon to a congregation in Enfield, Connecticut. He moved many people and helped them to become saved and trust in Jesus Christ. In “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, - which is the name of the sermon by Jonathan Edwards- the author uses each rhetorical appeal to connect with his congregation. The whole purpose of Edwards’ sermon was to try and get all the unsaved men in his congregation to trust in Jesus Christ as their savior and be converted. He was a very persuasive man who successfully reached out to his congregation by digging down deep and coming in contact with many people’s personal lives and making them think long and hard about why they are lucky enough to wake up every morning. In his sermon, Jonathan Edwards uses the three rhetorical appeals- ethical, emotional, and logical- to reach out to his congregation and try and help them to see why they should trust in Jesus Christ.
However, both groups consciously reshaped the organizing framework of religion to diminish its ordering of their lives within the public and private sphere. Prothero posits that while “The Bible remained authoritative [. . .] Americans insisted on interpreting it for themselves” (47), especially women who lived under its patriarchal construction. “In that effort,” Prothero continues “they were assisted by a new culture hero: the populist preacher, who combined evangelicalism and egalitarianism in daring new ways” (47). Prothero maintains that it was “the rise of pulpit storytelling” (51) that allowed such reimagining of religious ideology. Prothero goes on to argue that the “story sermon” (51) as a rhetorical style “did not catch on as fast in New England as it did in the South and the West (51),” a point ...
In Maclure and Taylor’s essay, they discuss the legitimacy of allowing religious accommodations that allow people to follow their beliefs. In an excerpt of the article, Maclure and Taylor talk about how some people believe that religious beliefs are “expensive tastes”. In that section, Maclure and Taylor list out reasons both for and against the opinions about whether or not religious beliefs are expensive tastes. Overall, Maclure and Taylor are not successful in convincing their readers that religious beliefs are a legitimate reason for accommodation, rather, their counter arguments are more convincing than their arguments.
Christianity has quickly begun to lose its true meaning throughout the years. It’s when people use words like love and morals and common sense—they just don’t have the same meaning as they once did all those years ago. Christianity though, unlike the previously stated words, has been modernized in such ways that we have deceivingly altered things such as “The Ten Commandments” to foolishly fit our desired lifestyles. We have begun a modernization of Christianity I like to refer to as, Twenty-First Century Christianity.
Sweet, Leonard I. Communication and Change in American Religious History. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1993.
The beliefs and claims of secularism is “a form of opinion which concerns itself only with questions, the issues of which can be tested by the experience of this life. More explicitly, secularism is that which seeks the development of the physical, moral, and intellectual nature of man to the highest possible point, as the immediate duty of life – which selects as its methods of procedure the promotion o...
In the past few years, America has been becoming more and more liberal with its stance on various issues. We are changing laws and practices that have long been in place, and while some view it as progressive, others view it as morally wrong. By encouraging changes in practices that were established with a Biblical mindset, America has begun to subtly alienate the Christian. Although America is still a land where individuals are free to practice their faith freely, it is becoming harder to display...
“Modern societies have much in common, but they do not necessarily merge into homogeneity”. There are many different ways that this article can be perceived. In my opinion, the argument is very convincing that Western culture is not the culture of the world. There are many cultures around the world that are highly functioning with Western influence, and the author does an excellent job of incorporating examples of these societies into his argument. Countries such as Japan are experiencing what Huntington describes as a cultural backlash.
Due to new contacts in trading they improved pulleys, pumps in mines. As well as the introduction of printing. As for the families it changed to European style families. People got married later which emphasized the importance of the relationship. Along with most people not being able to
I think we are naive to think this lens will be completely eradicated from our nation. However, its resurgence should concern us all. The author of our book contends "This move toward a higher level of expression demands a dramatic shift in attitude - a shift much greater than that