City to City DNA: What is Cultural Engagement?
The following is an abridged excerpt from Chapter 8 of City to City’s collection of papers, Gospel-Centered City Ministry: The City to City DNA, in which Redeemer City to City’s co-founder and former chairman, Timothy Keller, details the organization’s core values.
The full video version of Chapter 8: Cultural Engagement can be found below. The entire series of papers and videos is available here.
WHAT IS CULTURAL ENGAGEMENT?
Interacting with culture is crucial to doing ministry in major cities—but it must be done with biblical wisdom. Even if we live in our native country, we are surrounded by groups and generations who are culturally different from us. This is especially true in cities. City to City’s DNA regarding both contextualization and cultural engagement highlights the relationship between Christianity and culture as a significant factor. And while these two practices are related and overlap, contextualization mostly focuses on how the church’s message and form are culturally shaped for a particular time and place, while cultural engagement focuses on the church’s relationship to the society around them. What does it mean to be “salt and light” in the civic order, yet also “pilgrims” and “exiles”?
For many churches there is no more important contemporary issue than this. Christians may find themselves unified in their doctrine (though even this is becoming less and less common) but divided over how they should relate to their surrounding cultures. What should the church’s relationship to politics look like? Should it even be involved in the field of politics at all? Does the church seek to change the culture around it, or does it take a step back and let it manage itself?
City to City advocates that Christians be deeply, faithfully present in their surrounding culture and maintain a mentality of serving people rather than coercing, disparaging, or avoiding them—all without assimilating to culture’s ways or compromising the values of the gospel. This sounds like an impossible task, but our unique identity as followers of God and his gospel makes it possible. By employing an attitude of what we call “subversive fulfillment”—respectful critique—we can both subvert and fulfill culture’s aspirations through Christ.
THE DANGERS OF CULTURAL ENGAGEMENT
First, it’s important to know what the inherent dangers of cultural engagement are. Many of these problems stem from unbalanced, extreme relationships that churches establish with the world around them. For example, there are Christians who think culture is in terrible decline and engage in power-seeking to rectify it. However, using political power—rather than transforming society through servanthood as Jesus did—ironically causes these people to become too conformed to the world.
There is also the danger of assimilating. This approach sees culture more positively—progressively moving toward greater justice and inclusion—and wants the church to join liberal and liberationist social movements. Though this group often believes it is distinguishing itself from society, the ironic danger here is that it is too conformed to it, particularly to its liberal trappings rather than its conservative ones.
Simply withdrawing from culture is another danger. This approach believes that by retreating into strong, tight-knit communities, Christians can avoid being polluted by culture. Yet this often results in the inability to learn from the culture and a blindness to seeing how much the culture has already influenced them. There is ultimately no way to prevent cultural engagement.
Finally, there is the danger of ignoring culture. Rather than intentionally withdrawing from society, this approach believes its local society is doing fine and doesn’t need renewing. This approach does not think Christians need to work from a Christian worldview; they just need to work hard and skillfully. They believe there is no need to analyze the culture—their job is to simply build up the church, win people to Jesus, and leave culture as it is. Similar to the danger of withdrawing, this attitude blinds people to how culture has captured their hearts in ways the gospel challenges.
THE PRACTICES OF ENGAGING CULTURE
In what ways can we engage culture? Many of the following are either covered in other papers on City to City’s DNA or need greater treatment than we can provide here. Nevertheless, here are a few ways we must engage culture:
Developing a Christian high theory or social theory: Before we can speak the gospel to a culture (contextualization), we need to interpret the culture with the gospel. Using the Christian worldview and a deep knowledge of the patterns and narratives of the Bible, we must analyze the patterns and narratives of a culture to discern the good, the bad, and the indifferent.
Contextualizing the gospel message and the church: As we contextualize, we must both adapt to culture and resist it so that those in the culture can hear the gospel in the most compelling way possible. This is cultural engagement through evangelism and apologetics that resonates with a large number of people.
Integrating faith and work: Christians must work either in the dominant cultural economy or in an alternate one, doing their work non-triumphalistically and from a distinctly Christian worldview. They should be motivated by serving the common good and have an appreciation for common grace.
Being political without being partisan: The institutional church must strike an important balance. It must discipline believers to be salt and light, loving our neighbors by making society a more just and good place for all to live and therefore being involved in politics. Yet this must be done without the church itself laying out a specific political and cultural agenda for change.
Tackling specific forms of injustice locally and nationally: This must be done without a legalistic and arrogant spirit. Christians must seek as many multi-partisan alliances as possible, being open about their Christian identity without excluding allies, guided by the biblical ideas of justice rather than secular, ideological accounts.
Engaging in conversations with non-believers both publicly and privately: Christians must build bridges and open doors to talk to other religious and ideological groups. We are to model talking with civility, humility, patience, and love.
To read about more practices in cultural engagement and the biblical nature of culture, see the full DNA paper here.
About the Author
Timothy Keller was the Chairman of Redeemer City to City and the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, which he started in 1989 with his wife, Kathy, and three young sons. For over twenty-five years, he led a diverse congregation of urban professionals that grew to a weekly attendance of over 5,000.