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Cultural Apologetics is Older Than You Think
I’m a full-time professor at a Christian university and a part-time teaching pastor in my local church. My students range in age from 18 to almost 90. Despite their many differences, they tend to voice similar concerns about the current state of American culture.
They believe some cultural elites in the United States are increasingly hostile towards Christianity, while others want to coopt the faith to serve their political agendas. They feel overwhelmed by the rapidity of technological advancement and its implications. They sense it is harder to gain a hearing for the gospel than it was even a few years ago.
Cultural apologetics is one approach to gain a hearing for the gospel in a changing world. The Gospel after Christendom: An Introduction to Cultural Apologetics, edited by Collin Hansen, Skyler Flowers, and Ivan Mesa, brings together fellows of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics to advocate for an old approach to apologetics that’s going by a new name.
Cultural Climatology
Drawing on an analogy from James Davison Hunter, Hansen argues cultural apologists aren’t forecasters who predict what the weather will be like today, but rather are climatologists who study weather patterns. Cultural apologetics is concerned with “studying and assessing the deeper-rooted values, ideologies, narratives, and patterns at work in our culture” (1).
One of Hansen’s key contentions, shared by the other contributors, is that apologetics shouldn’t be abstract or acultural. Truth is timeless, but challenges to truth vary in different times, seasons, and contexts. Apologists must always be prepared to do the same.
Truth is timeless, but challenges to truth vary in different times, seasons, and contexts.
Cultural apologetics begins by critiquing dominant cultural narratives. In our current context, commending the beauty of Christianity logically precedes defending the truth of the faith, though the latter remains important. Trevin Wax argues cultural apologetics represent “a precursor to evangelism,” setting the stage “so the gospel’s beauty can be accentuated” (18).
Building on this idea, Christopher Watkin contends that the biblical story offers authoritative, subversive fulfillment of the disordered longings of every culture. He argues that the grand biblical narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation “can function as a lens of cultural apologetics and as a way to invite people back to a home they haven’t realized they left” (34).
Yet as the introductory groundwork for cultural apologetics is being laid, there’s a surprising twist. Joshua Chatraw pushes back on the language of “cultural apologetics.” He offers two reasons. First, there’s no such thing as a noncultural apologetics. Second, the term is of recent vintage, but the practice has ancient roots. He commends Augustine, Blaise Pascal, and C. S. Lewis as exemplars of cultural apologetics from the Christian intellectual tradition.
Apologetic Method
Having established a foundation, the focus of the book turns to apologetic method. Alan Noble argues cultural apologetics should eschew the temptations to either accommodate cultural idols or adopt a combative attitude toward the culture. He suggests a more biblical disposition, “a posture of grace, which means a desire to understand the person or culture in front of you, a desire for them to see their idols as lifeless, and a desire for them to repent and turn to Christ” (67).
Like Watkin, Daniel Strange engages with the theme of subversive fulfillment, though he applies those biblical themes to the social imagination of Western culture. Cultural apologetics are not merely rational, because in biblical anthropology mind and heart are closely connected. Thus, Gray Sutanto argues the way one reasons is inexplicably tied to the desires of one’s heart. Unbelief isn’t ultimately due to a lack of knowledge about God, but a suppression of the truth God reveals about himself. This suppression happens among Christians, too, thus “Christians need to be exposed [to cultural apologetics] just as much as those who don’t yet believe” (98). It’s a form of countercultural catechesis.
Unbelief isn’t ultimately due to a lack of knowledge about God, but a suppression of the truth God reveals about himself.
Cultural apologetics includes both unmasking the emptiness of secular worldviews and demonstrating how a biblical worldview addresses our deepest desires as we pursue authentic human flourishing. Thus, Gavin Ortlund explores the unlivability of unbelief. Secularism leads to disenchantment, meaningless, and loneliness. Cultural apologetics helps us show people how the gospel satisfies those felt needs.
Apologetic Practice
The Gospel After Christendom responds to substantive cultural questions by exploring the three transcendentals: truth, goodness and beauty. Beginning with the goodness of Christianity, Rebecca McLaughlin notes that a growing number of unbelievers think that Christianity is immoral. Critics of Christianity’s goodness often cite the increasingly countercultural claims of biblical ethics and the failure of Christians to live consistently with their ethical claims. She has good responses to these concerns, but more importantly, she emphasizes the need to turn apologetic conversations to Jesus, who alone is truly good.
Similarly, Rachel Gilson argues that humans are designed to long for beauty and to be repelled by ugliness. The church is most beautiful when it looks the most like Jesus, so “for the sake of our neighbors, let’s be who we are” (138).
Yet neither beauty nor goodness would be enough if Christianity were not true. So, Derek Rishmawy reminds readers that defending the truth of Christianity is essential to all forms of apologetics. He shows how cultural assumptions complicate discussions of truth. Christianity’s rich vision of truth is satisfying because it goes beyond the personal, pragmatic fulfillment for which our culture often settles.
Apologetic Location
To be effective, cultural apologetics must have concrete application. For the contributors of this volume, that application has the local church as “Ground Zero” for all apologetics—including cultural apologetics. For example, Bob Thune argues the priorities and practices of gospel-centered churches open doors for gospel witness to unbelievers. The church should simultaneously confront and permeate the culture as it creates a countercultural community.
One way of permeating the culture is, as James Eglinton argues, by creating opportunities outside regular Sunday activities to invite people “to experience (and then discuss) a community of relationships infused by the gospel before they attend church” (176). Such occasions become third spaces where skeptics and doubters are free to ask hard questions, which creates natural opportunities to share the gospel.
Many of these opportunities are mundane. Sam Chan labels sports, laundry, and traveling by plane as “cultural texts”—artifacts that express a culture’s worldview. For example, the repetitive effort needed to have clean clothes can become drudgery, which reminds us of the innate human desire for greater purpose. That purpose is ultimately found in Christ. Thus the ordinary becomes a tool for cultural apologetics.
Joining a Cloud of Witnesses
Contemporary cultural apologetics requires understanding our post-Christian age. The authors refer regularly to Lesslie Newbigin’s missiological perspective, Charles Taylors’s insights about expressive individualism, and Tom Holland’s contention about the Judeo-Christian roots of modernity’s values. The message is clear: effective apologetics has always required cultural awareness.
Though cultural apologetics is a relatively new term, it’s deeply rooted in the Christian tradition. For example, references to the apostle Paul’s apologetics at Mars Hill appear in many chapters. Furthermore, The Epistle to Diognetus and Augustine’s writing show up as examples of cultural apologetics in the earliest centuries of Christianity. In the modern age, we find cultural apologetics in the robust theological-cultural vision of Abraham Kuyper, Herman Bavinck, and J. H. Bavinck. And, of course, Tim Keller’s vision for culturally engaged pastoral apologetics is foundational to the book.
Though cultural apologetics is a relatively new term, it’s deeply rooted in the Christian tradition.
As the nature of cultural apologetics came into focus, other examples of cultural apologetics came to my mind: Carl F. H. Henry, Francis Schaeffer, and John Stott. These men were cultural apologists who exercised considerable influence over various English-speaking evangelicals during the latter half of the twentieth century. Their cultural context might better be described as late-Christendom rather than post-Christendom, but they provide further evidence that believers have always engaged in cultural apologetics.
Though cultural apologetics isn’t a new approach, it must be continually adapted for each generation as they address contemporary cultural trends. Thus, The Gospel After Christendom is a vital resource for equipping believers to evangelize faithfully in our cultural moment.
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