lecture on two kingdoms, how many cultures? the life of the church in post- christian america. [applause] >> i went back and listened to that interview with johnny cash when he died, and featured it on our of the agenda. he talked about the incarnation. you would not have thought johnny cash would talk about the incarnation. in 1939, just before england entered world war ii t.s. eliot gave it three lectures at cambridge, later assembled an nsa untitled "the idea of a christian society -- better assembled and entitled "the idea of a christian society." the fact that a problem will

take a long time to solve and demand the attention of several mines for many generations is no justification to postpone the study. it is wise advice on many subjects. . .

>> i want to talk about the nature and calling of the church and the world. within sites to many thinkers, some sociologists, philosophers, about how cultured art -- cultures are shaped and shape their members. reducing this talk as far as possible, i suggest american christians can best serve the health of american culture by striving to be delivered about and faithful to a way of life that historian robert woken called "the culture of the kingdom of god." i was interviewing a poet not long ago who, during a rambling conversation, we were talking about art, church, creativity, and language, and somehow we got to the point where he observed that he could not imagine a

church leaders in the early church sitting around trying to come up with a strategic plan to influence roman culture. it is not seen the thing they would do. that poet may have been familiar with an essay by robert wilkerson and which the early church -- wilken pointed out that the early church leaders was embedded in demands made of its members to embrace a new way of life. the church was less interested in transforming the disorders of the roman empire then of building its own sense of community, and it led these communities be the 11th that would gradually transform culture. -- be the leaven that would transform culture. it was itself a culture and created a new christian culture. that same point was made in a conversation i had with d.h.

williams, a professor at baylor university. he teaches the work of early christian fathers. we were talking about how seriously the barely -- early churches the supervision of new converts to the process of enculturating its members in shaping its way of life. not just giving them a set of ideas to believe in. here is what williams said. in the process of teaching or catechizing you christians, it was taken with seriousness that the commitment they were making was a corporate one and an exclusive one. corporate meaning that were part of a community. exclusive meeting that there were some things that community did not do. and it entailed a body of meaning that it was inviting them to become members of the counterculture, from the one in which they converted from. even the process itself raise the important question about the church as culture. you are defacto encouraging the new christian, this is still williams, to learn a new

vocabulary, a new sense of what is the highest, the good, the beautiful, that there are true things and false things, that there are certain moral lines to be drawn in the sand, and that you may struggle with these in part of that struggle is a very good. that is about what it means to disciple the new believer in the early church. it was to acculturate them. to speak of the church as a culture, is to use the word culture and that the way we use it today -- then we use it today. today we use culture to me like so, not a way of life i sometimes think that people will let -- people who are poor have a way of life and people have more money have a lifestyle. when robert and will begin a rights of a christian cross church is referring to the pattern of inherited meanings -- christian culture, he is referring to the pattern of inherited meetings in the law

into stories that can inspire, order, and god the behavior and affections of a christaian people. wilken is reminding individual americans that the gospel is about the calling of the people. it is not the making of discreet and separate conference. using language that echoes text in the tour, st. peter addressed this question exile in asia minor this way: you are chosen race, a holy nation, of people for his own position, that you may proclaim the excellencies -- that his call to out of his light. once you have not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. it is a much more communal understanding of what conversion is about and is often the case in contemporary american churches. a theologian picked up on this

theme where he picked up -- or he argued in "against christie and 8," that in the new testament we do not find a private gospel -- "against christianity," that in the new testament we do not find a private gospel. the gospel is the announcement of the fathers formation through this on in the of a new city, the city of god. if this is the case, the church is not a club for religious people. the church as a way of living together before god, a new way of being human together. what jesus and the apostle proclaimed, who was not a new ideology or a new religion in our modern, attenuated cents. they proclaimed that god had established the order in the midst of history, not perfectly, but truly. the church anticipates the form of the human race is it will be when it comes to maturity.

she is the already of the new amenity that will perfected -- will be perfected in the last days -- the new humanity. conversion is the beginning of our resocialization and inculturation into the way of life practiced by the ecological community. modern christianity has lost sight of this vision. our churches are more likely to be clubs for religious people in communities of disciples striving to live all of life under god's kingship. for many modern christians, christians are dispensers of fire insurance in the mood brighteners. they are not nurturers of a way of life. they are not the source of the best way to act and think in all spheres of experience. the message of the gospel is assumed to be personal and private, not communal and public. many well-meaning christians believe the church can be most

relevant and leavening by imitating the cultural patterns that are fashionable and popular. it is assumed we need to communicate a message, and insight about some values in a way that will not interfere with conventional lifestyle choices of our neighbors. many believe that traditional commitments, traditional principles can be sustained without tradition scared i think that ignores the reality that our heads of follow our hearts. we believe what we loved leaving. our hearts are often shaped by how we live as embodied creatures. a culture by sustaining practices that shape our loves and guides are thinking. richard weaver, i have a copy of his book back in my hotel room, and he makes of very similar in

augustinian observation. when we are firm that philosophy begins with wonder, we are affirming that sentiment is interior -- anterior to reason. we do not undertake to reason about anything until we have been drawn to it by an effective interest. weaver didn't like the title of "ideas have consequences." ideas come from somewhere. in the very first paragraph in chapter one, it makes it clear the author was not just interested in fairfax, but in the conviction and disposition -- interested in the effects, but in the conviction and his position that sustains ideas. every man has three levels of conscious reflection. his specific ideas about things, his general believes, and his metaphysical dream of the world. the first time i read this, in 1984. i had never heard of him. i read this first sentence.

i thought, what is he up, a buddhist? but metaphysical dream he meant the intuitive sense we have of the way the world is. not a set of their radical constructions, but a deep, precontracted sense of constructions. culture is originally on matter of today's sitting. thus, we can understand why its most splendid flourishing stance and proximity with the primitive phase of a people, in which there are powerful feelings of oughtness directed towards the world in before the failure of nerve has begun. he writes, culture is sent it refined and measured by intellect. he is not saying feeling is everything, but he is saying we are moved to embrace truth by a love for the truth. i think this is an augustinian idea. our explicit ideas rest on what

he calls the metaphysical dream. it echoes a very nicely with another description of how cultures shape our consciousness. he writes, our culture survives prince away by the power of institutions to bind and lose men -- by thsurvives prinicapply the power of institutions to bind and policemen. with that understanding -- bind an loose men. [unintelligible] common sense of what reality is is conveyed by cultural practices. a sociologists makes a similar point in a similar -- and a forthcoming book. cultures are a system of truth claims and moral obligations embedded within practices, within admyths, within a

narrative's, a communal narrative that shapes the moral imagination. a culture is a world view but in a much deeper sense than the word is used. this world view is so deeply embedded in our consciousness, in the habits of our lives and social practices, that to question our world view is to question reality itself. when one is a member of a moral community, then moral conformity is not just the exercise of a duty. it is not the taking of a heroic and isolated stand. when you are a member of the community, operate as is expected and rewarded by a rich network of social relationship. and the truth community, a person feels like a member or something. it carries with it certain comfort expectations. i have offered a theological claim that the church is best understood as a community is sustaining a way of life,

informed by the truth claims, rather than an agency committed to transforming truth claims that do not require a particular way of life. the gospel is not a message about escaping human existence, but about the redemption of human life and a call to live out that life now and into eternity in concrete and public ways. i have also presented a sociological or pheasant -- philosophical claim that what we claim as a knowledge is guided by an antecedent orientation of the hard core of the soul, and the role of cultural institutions in our lives is to orientate our affection so we see reality as it is. to shape our convictions about the kinds of beans we are, the kind of world we live in, and the kind of beings we are. these claims are true. in the best way american christians conserve their

neighbors is to commit to a different way of life than is now conventional. that requires recognizing cultural disorder. that is not obviously moral. that is not something that american christians are good at. the vocabulary of order and disorder is one that shows up among most evangelicals. let me give an example. there is a good kind of disorder that christians should be more nervous about. in the mid-20s century we have seen the rise of youth culture, with this assumption that intergenerational discontinuity is the norm, that every generation will have its own culture. given the fact that culture, the word culture refers to a way of transmitting convictions from one generation to the next, the phrase youth culture is a contradiction in terms but we have embraced it. marketers have successfully entrenched the notion of youth

culture by creating product lines and tended to define adolescent identity as a rejection of parental experience. this weakens the families ability to pursue the cultural task of moral transmission. it weakens the understanding of family itself. a proper understanding of the meaning of family is intergenerational. eliot in considering the role of the family said that even the nuclear family was too limited in scope. "when i speak of the family, i have in mind of bonding that is a long period of time than this. a solicitude for the unborn, however remote. unless this reverence for past and future is cultivated in the home, it can never be more than a verbal convention in the community." the dynamics of youth culture segregates generations, keeping

them focused on their age group, and not having a sense of membership or belonging in generations that have preceded them and generations that will succeed them. youth culture is not good for culture. it is a form of disorder. yet it is the fortunate and -- for american churches were quick to embrace. evangelicals to see something that is a cultural disorder into a see it as a ministry opportunity rather than something that should be addressed as something that will misshape our lives in some way. youth culture is not good for culture. but american churches embrace it because they believe adopting the style or vocabulary of youth culture is an effective way to communicate a private message about salvation. whether or not it offered a good way to live, it was cultural a healthy, or good way to love our

neighbors was not on the radar. it is the way the culture is. we want to communicate, be relevant. let's do it. this is an assumption that is rooted in the enlightenment thinkers, rather than in scripture or the church history, that the gospel is the message that is private and personal. public life, including government, science, art, education could be pursued without reference to revelation or tradition. religion was subjected. this has become the dominant view in the west even among christians. many devout american christians for a long time have believed that being too interest in culture, paying attention to cultural institutions was a distraction from the real focus of christian life. many american christians have been culturally and art. -- inert. and education, for decades, a

view of education was taking hold in american public schools that questions in it -- rarely notice, the ideas about the nature of learnings that were different from that historic learning. kristin's just kept sending their kids to public schools. in the 1960's, when school prayer was declared under constitutional did christians care about education. only when a religious issue became obvious that christians became upset. it is same -- it is true of other areas of cultural life. the ideas of science as promoted of the nature of knowledge, the nature of nature have moved further away from a christian understanding. they promote a mechanical model of human nature that has a significant dehumanizing consequences. questions ignored what they were saying -- christians ignored what they're were saying until evolution camelot. in the arts, christians have

been ignoring trends. only when the arts transgressed aligned towards the explicitly religious or moral too many christians take notice. in literature, christians have been ignoring contemporary fiction. in popular and literary work, but when a book like the harry potter box, which make religious claims, christians take notice. never mind that other popular books alighted bans all sorts of bad ideas about the nature of work or history or personal identity. matters concerning which questions should have an interest. i could go on and on. in the world of sports, about which i know almost nothing. is there a game tomorrow? many secular critics for decades have lamented the loss of a sense of play and sportsmanship as professional sports become commercialized, more qualified,

more driven by the demands of television. there have been few thoughtful, christian commentators about this. the only critical response i have noticed was the outcry few years back when the nfl was going to crack down on churches with super bowl parties. then it is an issue. so, there is a pattern here. it is a dualistic pattern. as soon there is a compartment of life called religion concerned with personal and family issues and jesus is lord over the compartment. then we have the world of culture, economics, science, education, technology, politics that is human life beyond the narrow slice of internal experience we call religion. since jesus does not care about such matters, then we will not pay attention to it. i like to call this "honey i

have shrunk the lord." jesus said before he gives the great commission, all authority has been given to me. therefore go and make disciples. for modern americans, lord and heaven and -- of heaven and earth has been reduced to private life. that is a big problem. this is not a lot of time. i want to suggest that the form of life the church should take should not emulate what is popular, but actually express the best way of living. what i want to do in closing is to refer to a recent study about the kinds of convictions that contemporary culture has shaped. this picks up closely with what charles talked-about with relativism. i encourage you to read and do a book by a christian smith who

has a book called "souls in transition," in which he discusses some emerging adults. now we have children, adolescents, are merging adults, until you are age 29, and this is actually a significant term in social science. not quite adult, not quite -- somewhere in the middle. there is a chapter and the book called the cultural worlds of emerging adult. this is a sobering section. he talks about the deep relativism. i want to read one paragraph from this book -- the majority of emergent adults have great difficulty grasping the idea there are a reality that is objective to their own awareness, that may exist that could have a significant bearing on their lives.

in philosophical terms, emerging adults function as soft and a logical and realistic. -- antological anti-realistic. they are imprisoned in their own subjective cells. unable to know the real truth of anything beyond themselves. they are doubtful said an identifiable objective, shared reality might exist across and around people that can serve as a reliable reference point for argument. not only do they not believe in truth, objective truth, they do not believe in reality. this is the majority of people in their 20's. this is the most sobering part. when we interviewed and tried to get response to talk about what they to be substantive, moral beliefs, reflect a universal standard, many could not

understand what we were trying to get at. they had difficulty seeing the possible distinction between objective moral truth and relative human invention. this is not because they were dumb, they write. it seems to be because they cannot believe in or conceive of a given objective truth, fact, reality or the nature of the world independent of their subject itself experience. -- subjective self-experience. what a merging adults take to be reality consists of a multitude of subjective and autonomous experiences. smith talks about this, based on this idea, the idea that everybody has a different set of morality, moral concerns. it may be true for some people, but it is not true for me. moral decision making is really easy.

you file your feelings. -- follow your feelings. i would argue that this is built into the texture of modern culture, that it's built into the texture particularly of the consumer driven culture in which the customer is always right. these young people have absorbs this sense that my choices confer truth to things, and my choices are things that define reality. if that is the case, it is an odd thing for the church to have adopted the idea, the model of market, of being a marketing institution. of selling the commodity of salvation. it is an odd thing. if that market model, taken to an extreme, has created this sense of being a sovereign consumer, for the church to add momentum to that sense of

sovereignty of individuals. again, i am trying to suggest the best services churches can offer is to be properly counter cultural. a presbyterian pastor argued that it is the task of the christian community to give guidance in the living of life and a culture that is relentless in reducing, constricting, and enervating life. robert wilken has argued that at this moment in the churches history it is less urgent to convince the alternative culture in which we live of the truth of christ than it is for the church to tell itself its own story and nurture its own life, a culture of the city of god. what might this mean? i found it interesting i want to -- i want to close with a quote from pope benedictus xvi. he was interviewed in 1995. perhaps the time has come to say

farewell to the idea of catholic cultures. maybe we are facing a new and different kind of setback in the churches history where christianity will be characterized by the mustard seed, where will exist in small groups and that none the less live in intensive struggle against evil and bring the good into the world that let god in. the church of tomorrow will be that a church of minority,. society is no longer a christian environment. just as it was not in the first five centuries. the church must form cells in which mutual support and a common journey can be experienced and put into practice. being willing to be a minority, the more post christian culture becomes, a more faithful christians will look homage. we might as well get used to it. -- we will look amish. we're not doing our neighbors a

service by trying to look as much like them as possible. this will require some rethinking for many of us, because i think the church in america has often seen itself as providing a chaplaincy to a cultural status quote that is already established. i am not sure that is in the best interest of loving our neighbors for the future of american culture. thank you very much. [applause] >> after an editorial board luncheon with a perspective author at the u.s. naval institute, a young the bill clay -- bill mcclay told the board that the author was a bore and a