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Add Cultural Apologetics to Your Evangelism Tool Kit
In his 1896 lecture “The Will to Believe,” American philosopher William James (1842–1910) described religious beliefs as either “live” or “dead” wires. A live hypothesis is a real possibility for someone.
For example, James said, if he were to ask you to believe in the Mahdi (someone claiming to be the messianic figure in Islam who is to appear at the end times to rid the world of evil and injustice), you’d probably not even know what was being asked. There’s no “electric connection with your nature.” No spark of credibility at all. It’s a dead wire for you. But if he were to ask an Arab (even if not one of the Mahdi’s followers), the possibility would be alive. “Deadness and liveness in a hypothesis are not intrinsic properties,” James said, “but relations to the individual thinker.”
The possibility of a religious belief is either a live or dead wire. “A living option is one in which both hypotheses are live ones.” For many in James’s time, the choice between being a Muslim or a theosophist was basically a “dead option,” but the choice between being “an agnostic or a Christian” was alive. (And many of his contemporaries opted for agnosticism over traditional Christianity.)
For centuries in the West, much of human life was understood within the conceptual framework of a society influenced by Christianity. Belief in an unseen realm, or the assumption of heaven or hell after death, or the reality of human sin and the need for divine salvation—these were so widespread as marks of “common-sense thinking” that the evangelistic task was relatively straightforward: Show that Jesus is the One who overcomes the powers of evil and brings deliverance from sin. Show that Jesus is the only Way to eternal life because he took on himself the punishment for our sin. Show that we’re sinners in need of a Savior, and Jesus is the Son of God who meets us in our need and accomplishes our redemption.
With the fading of a Christian framework in society, these cultural touchpoints (God’s existence, the unseen realm, the definition of sin, our understanding of salvation) can no longer be assumed. An evangelist’s work becomes more complex. We often have to start further back—whether we’re talking about God’s existence, or distinguishing between cultural conceptions of sin and what the Bible says about human depravity, or making a case for the goodness and beauty of the church.
If traditional apologetics is about making arguments to defend Christian truth, cultural apologetics is about making arguments that showcase Christianity’s beauty and goodness, using cultural touchpoints as an opportunity for gospel witness. It’s a precursor to evangelism. It sets the stage so the gospel’s beauty can be accentuated.
In what follows, I offer two reasons (and one caveat) why cultural apologetics should no longer be a neglected tool but a necessary way of engaging people in a secularizing world.
1. We Want to Respond Wisely to New Social and Cultural Narratives
Returning to James’s analogy of dead and live wires, we may wonder, Is Christianity––traditional Christianity and its creeds and confessions and congregations and cathedrals—a plausible option for radically secular, never-churched people? Is it a live wire, a possibility for most people? Or is it increasingly a dead wire?
Cultural apologetics is about making arguments that showcase Christianity’s beauty and goodness, using cultural touchpoints as an opportunity for gospel witness.
Asking this question gets to the root of anxiety among Christians today. The reason many Christians worry about Christendom’s decline and the loss of traditional moral values is that it seems to make evangelism and discipleship more challenging. Likewise, the loss of cultural Christianity is met by the rise of new social and cultural narratives—different visions of the good life and how we find fulfillment.
One of the dominant visions of life today can be summed up by the term “expressive individualism,” an outlook described in Habits of the Heart by Robert Bellah and several other American sociologists. Bellah defines it this way: “Expressive individualism holds that each person has a unique core and feeling of intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is to be realized.” In other words, every person is unique, and the way we come into our own as human beings, the way we fully realize our humanity, is when that feeling of what we are inside, that spark of uniqueness, can unfold publicly.
There’s another way of describing expressive individualism, which comes from the philosopher Charles Taylor’s work in The Malaise of Modernity and A Secular Age. He says we live in the “age of authenticity.” Many of us Christians react positively to the word “authenticity” because we tend to pit it against “hypocrisy” (and Jesus was right to chastise hypocrites!), but this isn’t the way Taylor uses the word. The opposite of authenticity in Taylor’s telling isn’t hypocrisy but conformity. To be authentic means you refuse to conform your life to any vision that comes from outside yourself.
In the age of authenticity, the dominant questions are these: How can I find my true self and express my inner essence to the world? How can I make sure the presumptions of my family, my society, my religion––all these cultural expressions— don’t get in the way of me being me?
These definitions help us understand what is meant by “expressive individualism,” but most of the people we talk to every day have never heard these academic terms. They’re more likely to capture the ethos in slogans like “You be you,” “Be true to yourself,” “Follow your heart,” or “Be yourself.” These sayings, in one way or another, capture the essence of expressive individualism. Countless self-help books reinforce this idea.
Cultural apologetics is one way of adapting our mentality toward expressive individualism and other cultural narratives, helping us make a holistic case for Christianity. Our response to these cultural narratives will not be to merely point out the flaws and failures in what our neighbors believe but also to show them why these outlooks on life are ultimately unsatisfying and why only Jesus brings salvation, both for this life and the next.
2. Caring for Your Neighbor Implies Curiosity About the Neighborhood
Another reason why the discipline of cultural apologetics matters today? Because culture matters. There is no such thing as a noncontextualized gospel presentation. When we proclaim the gospel, we’re always presenting a divine and powerful message in cultural terms. As we see in 1 Corinthians 1, the message will be a stumbling block to some (Paul preaching the message to Jews) and will sound like foolishness to others (Paul preaching the message to Greeks).
Depending on the cultural context, some aspects of Christian teaching resonate with people and others sound foolish. Not long ago, I had a conversation with a church planter in Germany whose ministry is directed to both highly secular people and immigrants from the Middle East. Sometimes, during just one day of conversations, he’ll witness the same aspect of Christianity acting as a stumbling block for different reasons. The Christian view that any sex outside of marriage is sin is an obstacle for a secular German, yet for the immigrant Muslim, Christian compassion for all kinds of sexual sinners is the obstacle.
In the first conversation, the pastor must explain why Christian teaching on sexuality is good and not hateful toward those who identify as LGBT+. In the second conversation, the pastor must turn around and explain why Christian teaching on human sin and God’s love is good and why God’s mercy toward us rules out any sense of superiority or hatred toward other sexual sinners.
Cultural apologetics is one way of adapting our mentality toward expressive individualism, helping us make a holistic case for Christianity.
As more and more cultures collide in the West, we will not be able to fall back on the same apologetic method for Christianity as if all or most people are the same. One way we learn to love our neighbors effectively is to seek to understand them—what they hope for themselves and loved ones, what they think about the world, and what they want the world to be. To care about your neighbor means you’ll give some attention to the neighborhood—the norms, the values, the presuppositions, the culture of the world we live in.
Important Caveat
As we engage in this method, I should mention one important caveat: We mustn’t be so faithless as to think the gospel needs cultural Christianity or cultural apologetics to remain the power of God unto salvation. The church before Christendom wasn’t propped up by cultural Christianity, and Christians in many parts of the world today walk with God just fine with no need for cultural crutches.
Yes, Christendom may be an asset to Christianity in terms of plausibility structures, making it a live wire in a sociological sense. But theologically, we must never assume cultural Christianity supplies the electricity. It’s the Spirit who makes the gospel spread like wildfire, blowing when and where he pleases.
God doesn’t depend on Christendom, and we shouldn’t either.
Conversion is always impossible without supernatural intervention. Cultural Christianity may be one of the tools that God uses to smooth the path so some will understand the basics of biblical truth before being confronted with Christ’s specific claims. But God doesn’t depend on Christendom, and we shouldn’t either. Whether we labor in fields where Christianity seems as far-fetched a possibility as becoming Zoroastrian, or whether we labor in areas that still bear the fragrance of commonly held Christian values, our call to evangelism and missions remains the same—even if certain methods must change based on cultural context.
No matter what approaches we suggest or methods we use, we mustn’t forget that in the end, the primary reason anyone believes the implausible testimony that Jesus of Nazareth walked out of his grave isn’t because of live or dead wires, traditional or cultural apologetics, or our expertise in sharing the gospel. The reason is the Spirit’s awakening.
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