We’ve noted in other posts that the term culture can mean a variety of different things. In Christian circles there is much conversation about how Christ – or more accurately Christianity – relates to culture. It is difficult, however, to come to any agreement without clarity on its definition. First, we need to come to understand the possibilities of meaning in the term. Second, I want to suggest a way forward despite the variety of meanings.

 

To begin with, culture developed as a term during the eighteenth and nineteenth century in the context of European colonial occupations. Europe had culture – other societies did not. Therefore, the term originally implied a value judgment. What represented the greatest achievements in Western society served as the standard. Therefore, you could – and some still do – refer to someone as “cultured” or “uncultured.” The problem with this language is that it takes the term culture as a wholesale value judgment. Therefore, as many have noticed, it reinforces racism and imperialism because it judges all the interlocking pieces of a given culture as a single unit. Not surprisingly, Western people feel that European and American values, institutions, and habits are better than other cultures. Correspondingly, people from elsewhere often feel the same about their own cultural milieu. Therefore, anything from those other people is viewed as suspect. In fact, it can easily seem best to show them the better way – our way. 

 

The opposite use of culture is to narrow the term to mean a specific institutional or social setting. For example, we talk about a “corporate culture,” a “culture of greed,” and so on. While speaking so narrowly involves a helpful separation of various issues (avoiding the problem of generalization), it also leaves us with few – if any – ways of speaking more generally. There is no culture, only isolated pieces which don’t seem to be interrelated in any meaningful way. Yet as we know, the pieces of the societal puzzle do operate together in interlocking ways – even if we don’t always recognize it.

 

Most Christian writing involves flaws in one way or another. Many speak of culture too broadly; and so there is either a bias towards the values, habits, and institutions of the author’s native structures, or the author talks about culture so vaguely that it is not entirely clear what he or she means. For other Christian authors, culture really means only a few things – such as art, philosophy, government, and a few other institutions or habits. 

 

The way forward in discussions of culture must be to embrace multiple levels of conversation. In other words, we need to realize that the word culture has a broad semantic range. We need to be able to discuss the way social interactions and structures operate together in a broad manner; but we also have to recognize that this level of discourse is the most problematic for value judgments. Nevertheless, we can offer greater clarity in terms of moral reflection and responsibility at more discreet levels; but realizing that such a discussion will not help us understand the relation of one field to another. The way forward is to take care to distinguish between various levels of conversation.