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Book Reviews

A review of Cultural Sanctification: Engaging the World Like the Early Church. “…there’s no consensus on how Christians ought to engage the culture….Each option has strengths, but many of them seem to draw more from contemporary cultural assumptions than from centuries of Christian experience.” - TGC

Discussion

Fri, 12/27/24

Some key quotes from the article:

The two primary trajectories are isolation or confrontation, but, as he argues, “what is left is a sense of division and conflict built on two conflicting assumptions: the tendency to assimilate to the culture or to withdraw to the safety of a confined community” (11).

“There is no script for the Christian life that comprehends every possible engagement with the world. Those who improvise draw upon their skills and past learning to perform their role in the drama” (47)

Then, just as now, Christians had to exegete their culture as they exegeted Scripture.

At the heart of cultural sanctification is the belief that the church’s public witness depends on our personal and corporate sanctification. The early church’s central concern was that Christians were characterized by virtue, whether that helped win the culture or not. And sometimes it did.

I am convinced that the key to winning our culture is not more church programs, but more understanding of scripture and more living out that understanding within our lives.