The contemporary western church is moving from a post-Christendom relationship to culture back to being a besieged minority. This is the reverse trajectory of the early church. Careful study of the changing relations of church and culture in the first four centuries  has much to teach contemporary western Christians about our relationship with a changing cultural landscape.

The relationship between God’s church and its surrounding culture is complex, dynamic, and fluid. Most of today’s global believers, along with most believers in history, are in contexts where Christianity is a cultural minority—whether the surrounding culture is animist, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or communist. These believers have long learned how to be a godly minority, living as strangers and exiles (1 Pet 2:11), as did Joseph in Egypt, along with Daniel, Esther, and the rest of God’s people during the Babylonian and Persian exiles.
We in the west, and certainly including Australia, are in a fluid context. Our context has the legacy of a dominant Christian culture which is reflected in things like the location and size of church buildings, chaplaincy access to public institutions; legal structures and the general tone of public life in which political leaders at least paid lip service to Christian values.
All that is rapidly changing. Our dominant culture is increasingly one of aggressive and progressive secularism.
In Australia we see widened access to anti-life measures such as abortion on demand and euthanasia. Legislation of same sex marriage a few years back seems a quaint small step in view of the present tsunami of issues around gender identity. As for Christian beliefs and the church, we seem to have moved from some kind of widespread acceptance to indifference and are now seen as holding to dangerous ideas and practices that deserve condemnation and state-sanctioned suppression. The recent debate around the Presbyterian Church’s submission to the ALRC on the right of Christian schools to practise their beliefs throughout the school illustrate this. (Ask John McClean about that!)
How do we make sense of this? How do we respond? Do we take the Benedictine option and retreat to our caves and ignore the world? Do we try and preserve an imagined golden age of “Christian Australia”? Do we spit angry words of judgement on the world as we are pushed back from one foxhole to another?
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How can we have already been judged and already passed from death to life? The answer is love. Think of John 3:16. God’s love in Christ is manifested against the backdrop of our perishing in judgment for our sins. Our confidence on the day of judgment is found in the love of God that gave His Son for us, a love that satisfied God’s justice, a love that will not let us go (cf. Rom. 8:37-39). 

that we may have boldness in the day of judgment (1 John 4:17, NKJV)
John again highlights the love God has for us. “And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him” (1 John 4:16). Hearing these words, we cannot help but rejoice in so great a salvation. We borrow from John’s own earlier astonishment and exclamation of how great is the Father’s love for us (see 3:1).
Throughout John’s epistle he has gone on to describe that love that is beyond our comprehension. God is love and somehow through the Spirit in our union with Christ we find ourselves immersed in this love, in eternal communion with the triune God. Though we give ourselves over to a lifetime of study, meditation, and pursuit we will never fully grasp the love of God for us in Jesus.
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Younger people in particular seem to have no understanding of the reality of conflict or war and the complex calculus that needs to be done when making moral judgments about competing cultural traditions. Yet the ruling-class elites insist this is the new way and that any rebellion against it is some form of phobia, a literal fear of another religion, sex, or culture. Those of us who wish to preserve human nature and a teleological perspective on the world are not afraid of anything. We simply wish to protect the goodness, beauty, and truth of God’s creation and man’s ability to express that through art, music, and creativity.

I recently was back in the basement of my parents’ home, digging through old yearbooks and photo albums. My brother nagged me to find the old stereo with the turntable and vinyl records. In an age of modernity, it seems we can’t help but long for the things that have been indeed “crushed,” as recently illustrated by Apple’s new iPad ad.
Last week, Apple faced so much backlash to its new commercial bragging about the destruction of humanity, that the company quickly apologized and admitted it “missed the mark.” Particularly for those of us who are old enough to remember all of the musical, gaming, and artistic icons crushed by the huge hunk of metal’s descent to generate the “thinnest iPad ever,” the ad justified every fear we have of technology overtaking our lives. It also goes to show how out of touch the technocratic elites are with not only the experience of everyday Americans but humanity.
British actor Hugh Grant said it best in his caustic criticism of the ad: “The destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley.”
Many of us long for the days when we had more contact with the material world and a reality that forced us to interact with the tangible. We turned pages of books and magazines. We made our own brownies and cookies, even if they were from a box or tube. Despite more convenient packaging, many still made food from scratch. We ran or biked out on roads rather than in place with digitized scenery and climatized rooms. We felt a stronger connection to the environment around us and our interplay in it.
While technology makes life more convenient, it doesn’t alter the fundamental reality of human nature. To thrive, humans need connection with the physical world, including other humans. We see the devastating effects technology has had on physical and mental health, particularly in younger children during the years when establishing healthy relationships and habits is crucial for proper development, maturity, and happiness.
The Effects of a Disembodied Culture
When we disengage from the reality of the world around us, with all its challenges and obstacles, we become fragmented and disembodied.
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