John H writes in a comment on the previous post:
Absolutely, but it is naive to pretend that the process can work only one way. Denying that contemporary culture impacts the church’s mission amounts in practice to allowing one culture - the culture so familiar to us that it goes unnoticed - to remain unchallenged, while other cultures are perceived only as a threat to a Christian faith that has become inseparable from one cultural expression of that faith.
And since culture does influence every aspect of church life, it is healthy to be aware of how it does so, in order to be able to distinguish what is truly of God from what is simply “our culture”.
I think this is a brilliant point, and so I want to look at ways culture and the church react in church practice and worship. It is important to recognize that while some practices are neither commanded nor forbidden, they still convey meaning.
Language
Language is a big culture barrier. Even when we do form a ...
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Lutheran Carnival XXIII: Mister SpeakerFrom: necessaryroughness.org
Post Date: 2006-05-07 19:09:22
Daniel of Random Thoughts of a Confessional Lutheran has posted the twenty-third edition of the Lutheran Carnival, featuring the first Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Frederick Muhlenberg .
Thanks, Daniel, for your hard efforts despite all those distractions.
Ah, to have a Congress with no factions again…
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more Sunday in ShreveportFrom: necessaryroughness.org
Post Date: 2006-05-07 16:48:30
I did the usual church search and found several in the Bossier City-Shreveport area. I settled on Redeemer Lutheran Church in Shreveport, LA.
Pastor Culvert has posted his sermon texts on the website in the past, but he can’t now because the church is growing. He arrived as a vicar to a congregation of thirty confirmed, and after 2 years the congregation has tripled in size. People come seeking worship that is “reverent”. Pastor doesn’t describe himself as “...
more Socialist Dentistry in the UKFrom: necessaryroughness.org
Post Date: 2006-05-07 06:49:08
The NY Times reports that some people are pulling their own teeth rather than waiting for the dentist to do it in Great Britain.
But the problem is serious. Kelly’s predicament is not just the result of cigarettes and possibly indifferent oral hygiene, though he said he is careful to brush once a day. Instead, it is due in large part to the deficiencies in Britain’s state-financed dental service, which, stretched beyond its limit, no longer serves everyone and no longer even pre...
more Brush with Reality: China Fails to Quantify Environmental ImpactFrom: necessaryroughness.org
Post Date: 2006-05-09 18:10:06
The Financial Times of London reports that China is trying to adjust the reporting of its gross domestic product (GDP) to account for the country’s environmental impact. They’re not having very good luck.
I can understand the need to calculate such a number for a command economy, because command economies require that everything be known ahead of time. In order for command economies to tell suppliers how much to supply, they have to “know” the demand. Each s...
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