Theology and Culture: A Guide to the Discussion, D. Stephen Long (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2008). 114pp.
As the pastor of two local churches, I am constantly told that our church must be culturally relevant if weare to reach more people. Every week I get junk mail offering the latest workshop on connecting with ‘Gen-X’ or planting a church in a coffee house. It would appear that if the Gospel is to be proclaimed we must be tuned in to the latest cultural trend. But why all the push to be culturally relevant? Or perhaps a better question: what kind of assumptions are at work when we seek to relate the Christian faith and culture? And for that matter, why is that we invoke the word culture anyway? Isn’t theology complicated enough without tying it to the language of culture?
In this short work, Steve Long offers us a guide to understanding these questions and many more. Long is careful to name that the book is indeed a guide, seeking not so much to offer definitive answers as to lead us through the complexities of our modern preoccupation with culture. This preoccupation brings with it both promise and peril, which Long explores in the first lesson. The next several lessons work toward defining culture, its many uses in various disciplines, as well as its relationship to both nature and language. These are dense chapters as the material is complicated and doesn’t lend itself well to one or two page descriptions. Here we are forced to remember that Long offers not an in-depth explanation but rather ”A Guide to the Discussion’.
The second half of the book begins to focus in on specific theologians and their engagement with culture. Long leads the reader through a who’s who list including: Ernest Troeltsch, H. Richard Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, George Lindbeck, James McClendon, Katherine Tanner, Sara Coakley, and John Milbank among others. As the as the list indicates, this is certainly terrain that calls for a skilled guide. It is this second half of the book that really shines as Long helps the reader to see the development of ourpreoccupation with culture, as well as six contemporary approaches to engaging theology and culture.
In the end, Long’s guide shows that the relationship between theology and culture is a question of Christology. Every question of the relationship between theology and culture is a question of how we will relate Christ’s two natures: the human and the Divine. Following the example of the Christological definition set forth at Chalcedon, ultimately, these are questions which call for engagement and discernment, not airtight explanations. Steve Long’s ”Theology and Culture” is an essential guide to this discernment process.
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