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Postmodern review of Niebuhrs Christ and Culture. Christ and Culture, authored
by H. Richard Niebuhr in 1951, is a book which discusses ...
Submitted by boageync on February 13, 2008
Category: Miscellaneous
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Christ and Culture, authored by H. Richard Niebuhr in 1951, is a book which discusses how a Church or a Christian is to interact with ones culture. Niebuhr systematically answers this question by placing the church into the following five categories they have utilized through history to answer this question: "Christ against culture," "the Christ of culture," "Christ above culture (Christ synthesizing with culture)," "Christ and culture in paradox," and "Christ the transformer of culture."
Reading this book more that fifty years since it was penned, I believe Christ and Culture to somewhat dated, yet still highly relevant today. This review will discuss Niebuhr's five categories, his strengths, weaknesses, and what I see as a missing element for contemporary culture.
Niebuhr begins his book with the problem and question of how Christianity is to relate to culture. He indicates that Christ's answer to the problem does not always coincide with Christian answers (Niebuhr 1951, 2). This critique is valuable as it cuts through Christian hermeneutical idolatry in which people believe their understanding of the interaction of Christ and culture are systematically locked in to only one absolute definition. Niebuhr shows that following Christ can threaten culture for numerous reasons (6). While elaborating on the problem and defining his five categorical answers he does not believe that one person or a community can completely conform to only one type, which indicates to me that people can freely belong to multiple categories (43-44). The first chapter also defines the terms Christ' and culture'. As thousands upon thousands of pages have been written in defining and understanding Christ for over two millennium, I did not think his definition was needed. His exposition of culture provided a broad perspective, and I think one his definitions of culture which stated, "Culture is a social tradition which must be conserved by painful struggle...
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