Christ and Culture
A Post-Christendom Perspective
Craig A. Carter
Brazos Press
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Published by Brazos Press
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
Second printing, July 2007
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Carter, Craig A.
Rethinking Christ and culture: a post-Christendom perspective / Craig A. Carter.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 10: 1-58743-159-9 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-1-58743-159-3 (pbk.)
1. Christianity and culture. 2. Postmodernism—Religious aspects—Christianity. 3. Niebuhr, H. Richard (Helmut Richard), 1894–1962. Christ and culture. I. Title.
BR115.C8C335 2006
261—dc22
2006023237
Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
1. Reading Niebuhr in a Post-Christendom Situation
Part 1. Rethinking Christ and Culture after Christendom
2. The Argument of Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture
3. A Critique of Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture
4. Why Christendom Was a Bad Idea
5. The Alternative to Christendom
Part 2. A Post-Christendom Typology of Christ and Culture
6. Introducing a Post-Christendom Typology of Christ and Culture
7. Christ Legitimizing Culture (Type 1)
8. Christ Separating from Culture (Type 6)
9. Christ Humanizing Culture (Types 2 and 5)
10. Christ Transforming Culture (Types 3 and 4)
I hope that this book will be useful for professors who wish to help their students grapple with the challenges of the postmodern, post-Christian society in which we live. I also hope it will be of some help to ordinary Christians whose classroom is the culture and whose daily lives consist of trying to make sense of it. Most of all, however, I hope it will spark the imaginations of those creative, risk-taking church leaders who are on the cutting edge of ministry today. We live in a time when old paradigms are falling apart and new ones are emerging only gradually, and our greatest need is for a more fertile and more thoroughly sanctified imagination.
I am aware that the thesis of this book—that we must move from a Christendom to a post-Christendom way of thinking about the Christ and culture problem—will be judged by many individuals to be far too radical for their tastes. That is perfectly understandable so far as I am concerned. I know that not everyone feels the pressure of the post-Christendom trend equally at the same time. Western Christendom ...
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About Rethinking Christ and Culture: A Post-Christendom PerspectiveFew books have been used as broadly in Christian colleges and seminaries in the past half century as H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture. His five classic typologies of how Christ can relate to culture—Christ against culture, Christ in “paradox” with culture, and so on—have influenced two generations of Protestant and Catholic thinkers. But in recent decades scholars have become aware that Niebuhr’s typologies need to be rethought in light of changing circumstances. While Niebuhr wrote at a time when it was still possible to speak of Christendom, Christianity since that time has held less and less sway over American and European intellectuals and other shapers of culture. As such, Christianity has found itself increasingly marginalized. In this work, Craig Carter follows in Niebuhr’s footsteps, using typology to explore the crucial question of how Christians should relate to the world. However, he goes beyond Niebuhr to offer an alternative typology that is arguably more deployable in our post-Christian society. This book is a useful text for college and seminary courses and for any Christian who seeks to understand how to share a timeless message in changing times. |
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