Everywhere we look these days something is on fire. The church, the country, families, schools, you name it. To put it another way, we are increasingly aware of fractures in just about every area of life. In his recent interview with Apollos Watered, James Davidson Hunter referenced just how deep the fractures are, noting that the deep structures of culture are shifting. Deep structures are the ideas and principles that make a culture go, the things that we all implicitly agree to, the things that we almost never actually think about. They are the air we breathe, the water we swim in. The metaphor that Hunter used, and we at Apollos Watered have adopted, is that deep structures are the part of the iceberg under the surface—the aspects of culture which allow it to continue to move and function even when things change on the surface.
What happens when those deep structures break down?
Massive upheaval. If you have ever seen footage of an iceberg rolling you know exactly what I mean. The results can be awe inspiring from a distance, but you certainly wouldn’t want to be along for the ride. There is no such thing as stable ground. Still an iceberg, but everything has shifted.
Culturally we may not quite be experiencing anything as dramatic as a complete cultural flip, but the ground certainly seems to be moving. Things are different. The assumptions of the past no longer widely held, perhaps not even by a majority. Cultures, unlike icebergs, are very complex with a multitude of elements and variables and cultural shifts tend to happen slowly and then all at once. Hunter’s explanation of the founding of the United States as a hybrid of the Enlightenment and Christianity creating a common culture infused with hope across differences shows the underlying assumptions and the complexity of cultures. To be sure, there were inherent tension points, even contradictions, to say nothing of the glaring examples of how the ideals of equality and liberty that Christians and secularists alike espoused were completely ignored (e.g., slavery and the treatment of Native Americans). Nevertheless, a common set of ideas and ideals were not only possible but broadly held. Today, those common ideals are in doubt. Hunter goes so far as to say that he fears we are giving up the process of working through the contradictions in our culture: we don’t even talk to those we disagree with and don’t seem to think it’s worthwhile to try. Take even a cursory look at any social media feed and you will find plenty of evidence to support his assertion. Everything is a battle for supremacy by “our team” and the opposition don’t just have differing opinions, worse than wrong, they are evil and must be destroyed.
It would be nice to say, “well, that’s a political issue, not a church issue,” but unfortunately that’s not the case. For too many the political and the church have become so intertwined that not only is no difference seen, but to critique one’s party is to critique one’s faith. Again, all one has to do is look at social media feeds and this phenomenon is on clear display. Political and theological positions are equated and conflated. If one has a political or economic or environmental position outside of the current talking points of one party or the other, one’s faith and certainly theology is questioned.
We see a church in crisis, hemorrhaging people from the inside, pushing away many on the outside, and so we shrink. We become shrill, pining for “the good old days” on the one hand or capitulating to the cultural shifts on the other. (Never mind the fact that the good old days weren’t, and current cultural solutions can never live up to their billing). But even in the upheaval, there are signs of hope. Voices like Justin Brierly have spoken of a surprising rebirth of belief in God (he has a book and podcast with that title). It seems that there is something of a rediscovery of more traditional Christianity by some youth. It remains to be seen, however, if this resurgence is permanent or the temporary grasping of many looking for some kind of solid ground as the culture shifts.
Beyond glimmers and stats, no matter how bleak things may seem hope is real. The church has survived and thrived for two millennia across a myriad of cultures and cultural shifts. Jesus said that he would build his church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. That means human culture in all its forms and tumults won’t either. A simple look at the history of the Western church shows us this is true. From Paul’s letters onward, we see clearly that the church has never not been in crisis. Yet over its first five centuries, it grew and thrived, often under direct hostility and persecution until it became the very religion of the Roman Empire. Then, when Christianity had cultural power in the fifth century, Rome fell. For the next five hundred years internal tensions remained in the ashes of the former Roman Empire, but the church survived and even thrived and became corrupt. Around 1000, the culture shifted again, and the church schismed between east and west. Reform happened and the church survived and even thrived and became corrupt and in 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg and the process repeated itself again. Each time massive cultural changes led to massive changes in the church—roughly every 500 years. Which means we should not be shocked that it is happening again now.
Cultural structures change. So must the church.
This is not to say that we jettison the faith or redefine orthodoxy. Of course not. “I will build my church.” It is his church not ours— it always has been and will be. It is not for nothing that the same gospels and letters written in the first century are the Scriptures of the 21st century, that the words of the Nicene Creed of 325 AD were faithful summaries of scriptural teaching both then and now. The faith, the church, endures.
Like the leaders of the church in past moments of cultural change, it is our task to understand the times, recognize how the world is changing, ask the deep questions about the things that our culture assumes, how it sees the world and why. It is only then that we can show that the longings of the human heart cannot be fulfilled in our strivings no matter our time or culture. That perhaps the deepest structure in any and every culture, as St. Augustine said is this: “our hearts are restless until we find our rest in thee”.
Hunter points us clearly to the first important step: understand the times. Look deeply into how the culture sees the world and why. How has it shifted. What has caused the shift. Often the shifts come when ideals are divorced from their (long buried) Christian underpinnings. It is up to us as leaders to listen well so that we can understand the moment. But this is only the first step. Because we are never separate from our culture. We are shaped by it in large and small ways that we may or may not recognize. And we too are on the iceberg. We too face the upheaval. For all of us it is far too easy to simply cling to what was, to hold on for dear life. We can become bitter or lose hope. We can become exactly like those we are surrounded by and not like Christ.
But Jesus has promised to build his church. And he has. Through the centuries and cultures the church of Jesus Christ remains. It is his church. And so we can hope, we can work, we can build. Because God is faithful even when the deep structures shift.
