On Cultural Relevance

The Feast of the Reign of Christ

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in thy well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The Sunday Next before Advent

STIR Up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

On this last Sunday of the Christian Calendar, also known as the Feast of Christ the King and the Reign of Christ under the more recent revised Calendar, there is a reflection on some of the previous topics discussed this year.

A number of different topics have been discussed related particularly the subject of worship: what it means, how we pursue it on a Sunday, the way things like prayer and liturgy contribute--or indeed detract--from worship of God. Related to many of these is a question of doctrine, which was discussed primarily in the discussion of the Anglican maxim of lex orandi, lex credendi. What we pray reflects and informs what we believe as doctrines of faith, and therefore what we believe informs the ways in which we pray as much as what we pray.

In the West, the Church, whether it be Anglican or any other tradition, is in decline. Of great concern to many Christians is the way in which this overall trend can be reversed. Cynically, this leads to a view that places a great importance on filling pews and not on the transforming grace God offers us. In these situations, it is easy to see how doctrine can be sacrificed. Decline in Church attendance is ascribed to Christianity no longer being relevant to modern Western culture.

In this view, scientific advances of Western society, changing morality and social mores and generally a broader resistance to (real or perceived) antiquated, superstitious and discriminatory religious views, must be addressed by substantive revision of doctrines in order to return Christianity to the cultural mainstream, and thus again be relevant.

How much further from the truth could we be? JB Phillips, in his book Your God is Too Small, once noted that, “we can never have too big a conception of God, and the more scientific knowledge (in whatever field) advances, the greater becomes our idea of His vast and complicated wisdom.”

To quote the Anglican formularies, the ordinal describes the purpose of the priesthood as those called:

to be Messengers, Watchmen, and Stewards of the Lord; to teach, and to premonish, to feed and provide for the Lord's family; to seek for Christ's sheep that are dispersed abroad, and for his children who are in the midst of this naughty world, that they may be saved through Christ for ever.

As the Ven. Fr. Michal McKinnon paraphrases it, “the charge of the Church is to seek the lost who are in the midst of the world that they may be saved, not by us, but through us by Christ.” How much does this contrast with broad churchmen who argue that the Church ought to conform to society in order to bring people in?

The danger here is in false doctrine. We risk an approach which sees the application of the cultural context in which Holy Scripture was written and our own cultural context being applied to its interpretation in which which seeks to shape God in the image and likeness of God, rather than allowing it to be used as a tool to bring God's transforming grace to man in a way that allows us to become closer to the true image and likeness of God we were meant to be.

Does the Church maintain its relevance by changing the Church internally in order to meet people where they are, or does the Church meet people where they are by literally going out into the world to meet them and bring them into the Church?

It is St Paul in his epistle to the Romans who exhorts us to, “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect,” (Rm 12. 2).

As St Teresa of Avila reminds us, the Church is Christ’s agent on earth:

Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out; yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good; and yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now.

Being relevant requires many things, but it never requires us to change Church doctrines to conform to modern sensibilities. It requires the Church to truly teach the Gospel, wholly and completely, and then to practice it. It requires the Church to step outside of the walls of its physical buildings, to meet people where they are and respond to their needs in the way that Jesus not only preached the Father’s will, but worked it.