The new anathema is “cultural Christianity.” “Missional Christians” disparage it. The supposed demise of Christendom is the rallying cry of young, hip evangelicals. Many would prefer to be labeled “Arian” than derided as “Constantinian.”

Editor’s Note: In a blog note at The Gospel Coalition, Justin Taylor called attention to this article, initially published in 2009. Two years later, this is as timely (if not more) than the original posting date.

To scan the popular Christian publications today is to conclude that the category of heresy has not been lost, but it has been relocated. The new anathema is “cultural Christianity.” “Missional Christians” disparage it. The supposed demise of Christendom is the rallying cry of young, hip evangelicals. Many would prefer to be labeled “Arian” than derided as “Constantinian.” They suspect even classical Christian doctrine, infected as it supposedly is with the cultural categories of Greek thought.

For them, culture is as dispensable to Christianity as a hermit crab’s shell is to the crab. The true essence of the gospel might don cultural attire when necessary, but only to just as quickly cast it off, seeking new garb to attract a fresh set of converts. Hence the jettisoning of one more outgrown shell—the Mainline Protestant ascendancy of American Christianity—is cause for the post-Christendom crowd to rejoice.

From this perspective, glorious stone edifices in Manhattan such as Fifth Avenue Presbyterian and St. Thomas’ Episcopal are but discarded seashells scattered on the church’s historical shoreline. The Holy Spirit has found new and better habitations, like house-churches and theology-on-tap sessions in bars.

For others, culture is less easily distinguished from Christianity. It is almost as indispensable to Christianity as a turtle’s shell is to the turtle. A turtle is permanently fused to its habitation by its backbone and ribs; the shell is inextricable from the creature itself. Removing it would rip the animal apart. In its single shell lie a turtle’s protection, distinction, and beauty.

This unique relationship to its hardened exterior is what places turtles among the earth’s oldest reptiles—contemporaries of both dinosaurs and us. This relationship to culture calls to mind St. Patrick’s Cathedral, also on Fifth Avenue. When one thinks of “American Catholicism,” one does not think of an abstract idea—one thinks instead of the shimmering stone edifice packed with worshipers at 3 p.m. on any given weekday in a way that its neighboring churches, say St. Thomas’ and Fifth Avenue Presbyterian, are not.

This turtle/hermit crab distinction may not rival H. Richard Niebuhr’s typology in Christ and Culture, and by no means is it a perfect analogy. But it may prove instructive nonetheless.

These differing ideas of Christianity and culture—the expendable versus the essential—play themselves out in how different scholars grapple with one of the biggest religion stories of the hour, the explosion of Pentecostal Christianity in the Global South. For the hermit crab approach, consider Alister McGrath’s characteristically lucid history of Protestantism, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea.

He knows that the Protestant brain drain to older traditions—converts to Catholicism or Orthodoxy—constitutes a problem. Finding himself in a difficult field position, he punts to Pentecostalism, and in this passage one can almost hear his foot hitting the pigskin:

So what of the future of Protestantism? Those who base their answer on its fortunes in Western Europe, its original heartlands, may offer a somewhat negative answer. But for those who have reflected on its remarkable advances elsewhere, such an answer is inadequate. Yes, the sun may set on a movement—but it is too easily forgotten that the sun rises again the next day. Protestantism has had its moments in the past; it will have them again in the future.

The growth of Pentecostalism enables McGrath to end his history of Protestantism on a triumphal note. He rejoices that Pentecostals “see no need to engage with past memories of Christendom or modernity, proceed[ing] directly to the next generation of ideas and approaches.” Here is a movement liberated from “captivity to the cultural habits of early modern Western Europe,” and now fully adapted to the forces of globalization and entrepreneurship. The hermit crab crawls on, happily leaving the shell of European and American Christendom behind.

Read More
Matthew J. Milliner is a Ph.D. candidate in art history at Princeton University. He blogs at millinerd.com.