Posted on 05/28/2013 6:58:35 AM PDT by xzins
For centuries, Christians thought culture would change if we just had a majority of Christians in the culture. That has proven to be a false assumption. Culture is defined by a relatively small number of change agents who operate at the top of cultural spheres or societal mountains. It takes less than 3-5 percent of those operating at the top of a cultural mountain to actually shift the values represented on that mountain.
For example, this is exactly what advocates in the gay rights movement has done through the "mountains" of media and arts and entertainment. They have strategically used these avenues to promote their cause and reframe the argument. They are gradually legitimizing their cause through these two cultural mountains through a small percentage of people in society operating at the top of the media and arts and entertainment mountain.
Mountains are controlled by a small percentage of leaders and networks. James Hunter, in a book entitled How to Change the World, highlights what sociologist Randall Collins says about civilizations in his book The Sociology of Philosophies. According to Collins, civilizations have been defined by a very small percentage of cultural philosophers who influence seven gates and supporting networks since our birth as a civilization.
Hunter summarizes, “Even if we add the minor figures in all of the networks, in all of the civilizations, the total is only 2,700. In sum, between 150 and 3,000 people (a tiny fraction of the roughly 23 billion people living between 600 B.C. and A.D. 1900) framed the major contours of all world civilizations. Clearly, the transformations here were top-down.”
What an amazing piece of information. Imagine that. Culture has been defined since the beginning of time by no more than 3,000 change agents, a tiny fraction of the population.
That is why we must realize that making more converts will not necessarily change culture. It is important to have conversions, but it is more important to have those who are converted operate at the tops of the cultural mountains from a biblical worldview.
Those at the tops of these mountains are expressing their liberal worldview through these cultural spheres. The more godly the change agent at the top, the more righteous the culture will be. The more ungodly, the more liberal we will become. It doesn’t matter if the majority of the culture is made up of Christians. It only matters who has the greatest influence over that cultural mountain.
Our Current Status in Culture
“When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when a wicked man rules, the people groan” (Prov. 29:2).
For the last several decades, culture has become increasingly secular and liberal in the United States. But God has always raised up His change agents to represent His interests and agenda on Planet Earth. God is raising up His change agents for such a time as this.
We know that Jesus will return for a bride, that “He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:27). So, despite the trends we may see, I believe we need to operate from a victorious eschatological viewpoint. God’s current activity in the marketplace is part of this.
He is calling us in His church to “love the Lord [our] God with all [our] heart, with all [our] soul, and with all [our] mind” (Matt. 22:37). This means applying God’s mind to the natural order expressed through the cultural mountains of society.
Changing culture rarely happens without the cooperation of other like-minded change agents pooling their resources and influence capital to make change.
William Wilberforce Solves the Slave-Trade Problem
William Wilberforce was a British politician and philanthropist who lived in the late 1700s and was a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780 and became the independent member of Parliament for Yorkshire (1784-1812). He was a close friend of Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger.
In 1785, he underwent a conversion experience and became an evangelical Christian, resulting in changes to his lifestyle and his interest in reform. He was 28 years old at the time and wondered whether he could stay in politics and remain a follower of Jesus Christ. His good friend John Newton, who was a converted slave trader and author of the famous hymn "Amazing Grace," convinced him to stay in politics to model his faith in the public sector. His life was dramatized in a 2007 movie production from Walden Media entitled Amazing Grace.
In 1787, Wilberforce came in contact with Thomas Clarkson and a group of anti-slave-trade activists, including Granville Sharp, Hannah More and Lord Middleton. They persuaded Wilberforce to take on the cause of abolition, and he soon became one of the leading English abolitionists, heading the parliamentary campaign against the British slave trade until the eventual passage of the Slave Trade Act in 1807.
The Clapham Group
Wilberforce was part of a small band of influential leaders in England called the Clapham Group. They were a small group of leaders operating in the governmental "mountain" of influence. Its members were chiefly prominent and wealthy evangelical Anglicans who shared common political views concerning the liberation of slaves, the abolition of the slave trade and the reform of the penal system.
The group's name originated from Clapham, then a village south of London (today part of southwest London), where both Wilberforce and Thornton, the sect's two most influential leaders, resided and where many of the group's meetings were held. They were supported by Beilby Porteus, bishop of London, who sympathized with many of their aims.
After many decades of work both in British society and in Parliament, the group saw their efforts rewarded with the final passage of the Slave Trade Act in 1807, banning the trade throughout the British Empire and, after many further years of campaigning, the total emancipation of British slaves with the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. They also campaigned vigorously for Britain to use its influence to eradicate slavery throughout the world.
It was not a large group. It consisted of less than 20 leaders. However, these leaders were passionate about their faith, their causes and their commitment to those causes.
If we are going to have a positive influence in culture, we must rethink our strategy from "getting more people saved" to "getting more kingdom marketplace leaders operating in the places of influence." Both strategies are important, but cultural change will only happen when a small group of kingdom marketplace leaders operate at the top of these cultural mountains by solving societal problems and bringing a Christian worldview into their leadership.
There is a reason that you are known as a troll, you just burn up real estate and waste people’s time.
You don’t say anything, and you will chew up an entire thread doing it.
Why are culture won’t necessarily change Christians?
English please?
I don’t even see any gates
I didn't read the author saying that. I heard him say that having a majority culture is a good thing, but that without targeting leadership within that culture, you still have ungodly leadership.
There is logic to it. The only reason I mentioned TV networks is because they have such a profound impact on both culture and on political campaigns.
For centuries, Christians thought culture would change if we just had a majority of Christians in the culture.
When have Christians ever been in the majority anywhere? On what basis would Christians ever believe that they might ever be in the majority prior to Christ's return?
Yet the rise of the Moral Majority and of Falwell and of evangelicalism, which made huge political inroads, was largely made up of premillennialists.
My sense is that knowledgeable premillennialists, even dispensationalists, realize that much of their own forecast has not yet come to pass and could be centuries away. In the meantime, "salt and light".
BTW, this is why all that talk about "moderate muslims" is a bunch of hooey.
Since Billy Graham has become superannuated and Jerry Falwell has died, there is no Protestant/Evangelical figure who can serve as a figurehead; in no small part because of the vicious fight the left has put up against anyone new in the pipeline since those men came of age.
This is why societies with kings and popes historically have outlasted equality-based democracies; and even why great American family businesses and foundations veer off their righteous ideals or founding purposes straight into socialist politics once the founding family dies off. We are now seeing the sleepwalking culture of low information that seeks tyranny all by itself.
You have neatly summed up that once again in history, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” (—John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, English historian, 1887; who also said, “There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.”)
I don't think the post meant that. Remember, the Eastern Orthodox church is out there, and is not Catholic. But more to the point, even as late as the 1960s, the Anglican and Methodist Episcopal churches, to name two I am familiar with, were holding to the "apostolic faith" mentioned at every service in the Apostle's Creed. Then the Youth Rebellion, The Pill, and The Sexual Revolution started to take over U.S. Protestantism and its seminaries.
I totally agree, having grown up in a half-Protestant, half-Catholic family in a neighborhood that was half-Jewish. Learning where I stand personally, but tied by love and respect to these other traditions, has been a huge part of being an American for me. I very much want all those three streams to unite in the face of our common enemy (Ignorance, Satan, Islam -- whatever you want to call it.)
Ow! Awesome smackdown!
The chart says how the various groups voted, which is the point -- not the end result, but who made it so. Did you read the numbers?
Bingo! Time for the petty disputes between Christians, and even between Christians and Jews, to stop. Go with what unites us and be content in your own faith/denomination for the rest. But KNOW your faith and the large themes that divide it unmistakably from Islam.
America was Christian, I think that during our now distant past, that the majority of Americans would not have taken it casually if you told them that they did not believe in Christ.
While I agree with the intent of your long post, it is possible to resist many of the world's temptations and also utilize media not just for relaxation, but also to understand the culture towards which we need to be missionaries.
I saw The Passion of Christ (both versions) in the cinema; as well as The Nativity Story, Amazing Grace, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, The Prince of Egypt, and One Night with the King (story of Esther), all in first-run movie theaters. I've also rented DVDs of Luther, Saint Francis of Assisi, and a number of other Bible-themed films. On television, I watched The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Ten Commandments, Fireproof, and the recent, excellent cable series The Bible.
Also on cable, although it is a vast wasteland, are shows of Christian people who are "in the world, but not of the world", such as Dog the Bounty Hunter and Duck Dynasty, two family groups that pray together and work together on reality tv, as well as news commentators Laura Ingraham, Anne Coulter and Glenn Beck, who frequently mention their various Christian points of view. There are several all-religion Protestant cable channels and an excellent Catholic cable channel which has much to offer all Christians, EWTN. Even broadcast tv offers shows that feature Christian or Catholic characters, such as The Mentalist, in which one major crime-fighting character always wears a cross, and several characters frequently try to convince the agnostic protagonist that there is an afterlife.
The American colonies, 1607-1776; and the United States of America, 1776-2008.
The part where he says...
The privatized DIY American model is hopelessly inadequate and defective.
...he is just being nasty. Like some of my Catholic friends, he thinks that the cause of all the problems in the world is the Protestant reformation which itself was inspired by Satan. He lumps all non-Catholic Christians together as "Protestants" and gives us the code name "the privatized DIY American model". I bet Romulus would say that Obama and I are the same religion because neither of us are Catholics yet we both claim to be Christians.
I am pretty well versed in Catholic bigotry toward Christians. I have seen quite a bit.
The changes you mention in the Protestant church denominations are why I attend an Evangelical church. We are not part of any top down hierarchy. We are however affiliated with several other Evangelical churches which teach a similar Bible based message. If my church were to change and start preaching an extra-biblical message (such as the elevation and worship of mortal men), I would simply leave and find another church which teaches the word of God.
This same principle also explains why homosexuals have so much power and influence in the United States.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.