Culture, counter-culture and alternative culture

When we talk about contextualisation we mean the relationship between followers of Jesus and the 'host culture' - in other words the context of the Gospel in the surrounding culture.

In Matt 5:13-16 Jesus expresses this relationship in terms of salt and light.

You are salt for the earth. But if salt loses its taste, how will it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled on by people. You are light for the world. A city cannot be hidden when it is located on a hill. No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket. Instead, everyone who lights a lamp puts it on a lamp stand. Then its light shines on everyone in the house. In the same way let your light shine in front of people. Then they will see the good that you do and praise your Father in heaven.

When Jesus said this, it may have appeared to be something new to His listeners. However, in reality it was just restating what God had said down through the ages, starting from Abraham. And right down through the ages the people of God have become distracted and not been salt and light within the community and culture and built an alternative culture and community instead.

Going right back to the beginning, when God spoke to Abraham He said:

My promise is still with you. You will become the father of many nations. So your name will no longer be Abram, but Abraham because I have made you a father of many nations. I will give come from you. I will make my promise to you and your descendants for generations to come as an everlasting promise. I will be your God and the God of your descendants. (Genesis 17:4-7)

In the Middle East names have meanings - Abram means 'exalted father' and his new name Abraham means 'father of many'. Yet the people of God seemed to miss the emphasis on being in the context of being God's emisary to many nations and focussed on the verse 8, which I deliberately stopped before to show the emphasis. That verse says: I am also giving this land where you are living-all of Canaan-to you and your descendants as your permanent possession. And I will be your God. Sadly, God's people, as they have throughout ages, have focussed on the separate alternative community rather than the integrated relationship to the many.

Frequently Christians form some sort of parallel, alternative culture to the host culture and it is observed that this alternative culture tends to inhibit the spread of the Gospel into the host culture. This is because when there is a second parallel alternative culture then the Gospel is seen as foreign or alien, not something that is 'for me'.

There are other problems with this alternative culture. One of the most significant is that when members of the alternative culture find all there needs met within this community they therefore become progressively more isolated from their host culture. This isolation, over time, makes the host culture something undesireable and communication with members of the other community tends to become merely functional - buying, selling and working alonside them but without real communication or understanding. As this isolation increases, so the appearance of this alternative culture becomes more and more strange and alien to members of the host culture. This makes it progressively more difficult for members of the host culture to cross over into the alternative culture and evangelism diminishes till the alternative culture goes into survival mode with no real desire for meaningful contact with host culture. This is roughtly what could be seen from Christian communities in the Middle East up till the mid 1990s. However, like all generalisations, there were exceptions.

Over time the language of the alternative culture can change with the Christians using words and phrases that are meaningful to them but ambiguous or incomprehensible to members of the host culture. This can happen both ways and the host culture - especially among the young - can adopt a way of speaking that the Christians don't commonly use. Sometimes the Christians might attempt to emulate this language. But without understanding properly the culture, these attempts can seem 'pseudo' to the host culture and actually be counter productive in communicating the Gospel.

Sometimes the separation is quite deliberate on the part of the Christians as was the case for the Puritans who were the founding fathers of the USA. They were having difficulties within the culture of the established churches in europe and hoped to found a new and free culture where they could practice their faith without interference. Though some native Americans became followers of Jesus, the alternative culture had little meaningful contact with their host culture. The pendulum has swung right across now, with 'megachurches' setting up alternative communities right across the USA . In Branded Nation: The Marketing of Megachurch, College Inc., and Museumworld, James B. Twitchell gives the example of Southeast Christian in Louisville, Kentucky:

Southeast Christian is an example of a new breed of megachurch -- a full-service ''24/7'' sprawling village, which offers many of the conveniences and trappings of secular life wrapped around a spiritual core. It is possible to eat, shop, go to school, bank, work out, scale a rock-climbing wall and pray there, all without leaving the grounds.

These churches are becoming civic in a way unimaginable since the 13th century and its cathedral towns. No longer simply places to worship, they have become part resort, part mall, part extended family and part town square.

The megachurch example may have come out of a desire to contextualize or reach out to a generation that some Church leaders believe are being lost to the Gospel. In reaching out, they have not remained salt and light within the host community, rather have separated themselves from the host community. Looking in from the outside it might be questionable whether indeed these alternative communities are syncretistic forms of religion. Wikipedia defines religion as 'a set of common beliefs and practices generally held by a group of people, often codified as prayer, ritual, and religious law'. As such they appear more a form of religion than a relationship with a living God.

Some, however, are not attempts to reach out to the current generation, but deliberate attempts to create an alternative society, for instance, Patricia Leigh Brown writing in the New York Times on May 9th 2002, wrote an article entitled Megachurches as Minitowns:

By making it nearly possible to inhabit the church from morning to night, cradle to grave, these full-service churches can shelter congregants, said Dr. Randall Ballmer, a professor of American religion at Barnard College, from ''a broader society that seems unsafe, unpredictable and out of control, underscored by school shootings and terrorism.''

This kind of deliberate alternative culture would be similar but for slightly different reasons to the strict and particular Baptists and some of the Brethren groups who believe they have a Biblical mandate to be separate from the world. These groups will not have meals with others from outside their group and will even see other Christians as beyond the pale. This might be similar to some of the monastic orders which also separate themselves from the world, building monastries with big walls to keep people out. For people who believe that way, contextualisation is an anathema and wrong. They would never dream of even attempting to communicate the Gospel in any way other than their parallel alternative culture. This alternative culture is seen as their calling. For them, the host culture is seen as evil and a separation needed for Christians to be holy. Evangelism between this sort of extreme alternative culture can degrade into what might appear to be Christians standing behind inpenetrable walls shouting incomprehensible words at non-Christians the other side of the wall.

While not going that far, there are some groups who would also see a Biblical mandate to 'not change the Gospel'. Some of these Christians might either be 'King James Only' Christians and others for whom anything that even smells of aldulterating the Gospel is of the devil. Other Christians might interpret the Biblical mandate differently and see contextualisation as a technique to bringing people into the Kingdom, whereupon they would be absorbed into the alternative culture. Often people in this group see the host culture as bad and some seek to change the host culture to become a Christian cultue. It is worth noting that until Christianity became a state estabilished religion, followers of the Messiah sought to be salt and light within the community rather that changing the entire culture to be what is perceived as Christian.

The Christian alternative culture does not only relate to how people speak. It could affect how they dress or hairstyles, makeup (or lack of it), means of transport (like the Amish) or one thousand other small things that members of the host culture perceive as alternative. We know from experience how easily we can spot a Mormon just from the look of their haircut and clothes.

But it isn't just that extreme. Some Christians would be critical of some sub-cultures of the host culture. For instance, in some places, for men a 'clean cut' hairstyle is still considered somehow to be more Christian than long hair - even if among the general population long hair would be acceptable. That is just an example of something obvious. There can be many subtle cultural signs and indicators that members of a community pick up to know if someone is 'one of our people' or a 'foreigner'. Frequently people outside emulate some of the characteristics of the group while missing others. They are inconsistent. That inconsistency is of itself an indicator of being an outsider.

Other Christians, citing the incarnation - God becoming flesh - would see contextualisation as continuing this incarnational approach. Christians feeling this way would see a Biblical mandate to be 'in the world yet not of the world' to be fully integrated in the world, yet hold a different 'world view' to those around them. For some, the host culture is seen as neutral - neither good nor bad - and following Jesus can be worked out within that context. They might see man as fallen but might emphasise the good and wholesome aspects of the host culture.

However, no culture is perfect, as no culture is 100 percent bad. This applies as much to the Christian alternative cultures as to the host cultures. They too have some good and some bad attributes.

The early followers of Jesus, or followers of the Way as they preferred to be called, thought of themselves as visitors in a foreign country. They were just passing through en route to their heavenly home. People around them where they lived perceived this and accepted them as almost foreigners. It was not until the third century when the Emperor of Rome made Christianity the state religion that it became something normal to be a Christian.

Since then there has always been an ongoing tension. When the followers of Christ were within, but not of the culture they did not exhibit an alternative culture but a counter culture. This difference between an alternative and a counter culture may seem like just playing with words but I think the difference is relevant and significant.

When we talk about an alternative culture we are thinking about something that effectively runs parallel with the host culture and replaces it. Christians are not the only groups who exhibit this alternative culture phenomena - many ethnic and other religious groups also can create alternative cultures within a host culture. This can be significant when trying to reach, for example, Afro-Caribeans living in Birmingham in the UK or Palestinians living in Jordan.

When we think about a counter culture we are not talking about a replacement culture, but a culture integrated into a host culture which nevertheless exhibits characteristics which can be considered to be running counter to the host culture. For example, in a host culture which shows a high level of personal independance like in North America or Western Europe, a counter culture of followers of Jesus might show a high level of inter-dependence.

This separation between alternative and counter culture affects how we think about contextualisation. You might think of counter culture as being lifestyle choices within a host culture. Contextualisation therefore appears natural and part of being counter cultural, whereas it can seem forced or artificial if attempted from an alternative culture.

There are also questions about how this fits in Biblically. For example, within some cultures in the Middle East it is important to look well dressed and for events to have almost an air of decadence. Being rich is admired. Therefore if a TV preacher looks well dressed in an auditorium that is full of well dressed people who appear to have paid quite a bit of money to be there [even if the truth is the event is free] this alternative culture can create affirmative feelings in the host culture. But Biblically I want to ask the question is this good news for the poor? Good news for the poor is counter culture!

The question this raises is how it affects the three core questions of this book - creativity, dialogue and storytelling as a means of communicating the Gospel to Muslims. The best way of approaching this is to start from the position of a member of the host culture who has just decided to follow the Messiah, but has no experience of an alternative culture. Thinking about the claims and teaching of Jesus will affect their lifestyle which will tend to be counter cultural in places, but entirely different from context to context. It will not necessarily have any linkage with an existing alternative culture.

An example here might help - a group of new MBBs might decide to share a meal, pray and study the Bible together on a weekly basis. This meeting might be very different to the Sunday meeting of an established church. This meal together might express a closeness of relationship and caring for each other across what would not normally be their family or tribal groups. It might not involve singing songs, a sermon or other 'church' events while still being a valid expression of 'church'. This then is counter cultural in that it starts from the host culture, is not significantly abnormal within the host culture but runs counter to the expected family or tribal groupings of the host culture.

From the point of view of the three core questions of the book, I hope it is clear that we need to start from the host culture and using as creative approach as possible communicate the Gospel while remaining in dialogue with the host culture. Storytelling - or using parables - remains an excellent way of communicating as can be seen by the way Jesus used parables within the context of first century Palestine. Those stories or parables can focus on aspects of the culture that communicate God's truth in a way that transcends culture.

Our danger point that we must always watch and be aware of is that we are called to be salt and light within the community, not a parallel alternative community separated from the host community. When we become separated, then there is a danger of that, as Jesus said, the salt will lose its saltiness.