Selected Sources Regarding Christian Cultural Influence (for better understanding culture)

Disclaimer: As with all our resources and especially Podcasts, inclusion does not necessarily mean endorsement of the views presented.  Our aim was to include important presentations from multiple points of view so the researcher can form her own opinions—informed by  a Christian world-view.

  1. -An Important Introduction to this Page
  2. - In Case You missed this: Why Culture Matters (Tim Keller)

-Classical Period

-Middle Ages

    The Seven Liberal Arts

-Renaissance

-Reformation

-Enlightenment

                                                       *****

-Selected Prominent 19th - 21st Century Christian Cultural Commentators: 


    Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German neo-orthodox theologian, scholar and author who notably opposed Hitler and the Nazis and paid for that with his life because of his involvement in the plot to assassinate him.  Famous for his 1937 book, The Cost of Discipleship.

    D.A. Carson earned his Ph.D in New Testament from Cambridge University in 1975.  He is currently the author 57 books on a range of subjects, including his important and relevant Christ and Culture, Revisited.  

     Andy Crouch is an author (currently) of four books and has served as an editor of several publications including Christianity Today.  He serves on the Governing Board of Fuller Theological Seminary and also served on InterVarsity Christian Fellowship staff at Harvard University.  He speaks, writes blogs, and teaches mainly Christian audiences about his views on understanding culture, how Christians have historically adapted to secular culture’s influence and how culture changes.  

    Os Guinness was born in China to missionary parents, Os returned to England for his education in the early 1950s and eventually earned the D. Phil at Oriel College, Oxford University.  He is an author and social critic and the lead drafter of the Williamsburg Charter and the Global Charter of Conscience.  He became a leader at L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland and was there influenced by Francis Schaeffer.  He founded the Trinity Forum in 1991 and served as a Senior Fellow until 2004.  He is the great-great-great grandson of Arthur Guinness, the Dublin brewer.

    Abraham Kuyper was born October 29, 1837 in Holland.  He served as a pastor and  was later involved in publishing two newspapers and leading a reform movement out of the state church, thus playing a role in the forming of the Free University of Amsterdam.  He also served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands and died on November 8th, 1920.  He has had enormous influence on the Dutch Reformed churches that has spread to the United States and elsewhere. 

    Clive Stapes Lewis was a British novelist, poet, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian, broadcaster, lecturer (at Oxford University and at Cambridge University) and Christian apologist.  He and several of his literary friends including J.R.R. Tolkien were active in the informal literary group known as the Inklings at Oxford University.

    J. Gresham Machen (pronounced May chen) was a twentieth century Presbyterian theologian and New Testament scholar who is famous for his “battle” with liberal theology and at the same time for his reservations about fundamentalist theology and practice.  He played a pivotal role in establishing Westminster Seminary after he found Princeton Seminary faculty too liberal.   He was deeply influenced by B. B. Warfield who held that the best way to influence culture was by teaching Christian doctrine.  His scholarly work offended some fundamentalists who were anti-intellectual and offended liberal theologians who tended to accept materialist philosophy and tended to spiritualize Christian doctrine.  His book, Christianity and Liberalism is considered a classic by many theological conservatives.  His concerns played a major role in the path neo-conservatives and evangelicals took when they emerged from fundamentalism.   That in turn played a role in shaping developments in the second half of that century among Protestant theological thinkers, including Francis Schaeffer, and their stances toward culture.

    Charles Malik was a Christian scholar (Lebanese Eastern Orthodox) and was a Lebanese Ambassador to the United Nations.  He studied philosophy at Harvard University under Alfred North Whitehead and in Freiberg, Germany under Martin Heidegger.  He was the Lebanese representative at the San Francisco conference at which the UN was founded.  He helped draft the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1947-48)  and was the ambassador to the US and UN until 1955.  Among his works includes discussion of a Christian critique of the university and what he believed were the 'two tasks' of the Christian scholar.

    Lesslie Newbigin was twentieth century “British theologian, missiologist, missionary and author.”  He has been thought of as a seminal figure in fostering the emergent and missional church movements.   

    H. Richard Neibuhr was a neo-orthodox theologian who rejected the views of theological liberalism--especially its social gospel--and he is also famous for the analysis made in his seminal and influential work, Christ and Culture.  There he describes five ways the church in its history has understood the meaning of what it is to be “in the world, but not of it.”  Trained as an ethicist, he taught at Yale University for more than a decade and influenced several leading contemporary ethicists, including Stanley Hauervas.

    Francis Schaeffer was a pastor from the Reformed tradition who started L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland and produced influential books on apologetics and how followers of Christ might relate to the world of ideas and culture.  He is famous for his 10 part film/video series entitled, How Should We Then Live? and the controversy he stirred in the later part of the twentieth century over whether his ideas were or were not misunderstood and co-opted as a means to support conservative politics.  He was also criticized for alleged scholarly errors in his analysis.  Nonetheless, because of his genius and gifting, he played a large role in influencing many young evangelicals who became church leaders and influencers in the latter half of the twentieth century.  

   “Nicholas Wolterstorff (retired in June 2002) was Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology, and has taught at Yale since 1989.  Previously, he taught at Calvin College, the Free University of Amsterdam, and the University of Notre Dame and has been visiting professor at several institutions.  He has received many fellowships, including ones from the NEH and the Danforth Endowment.  He is past President of the American Philosophical Association (Central Division) and serves on its publication and executive committees. He is on the editorial boards of Faith and Philosophy; Topics in Philosophy; and is also General Editor of the Supplementary Textbook Project of the Christian College Coalition and a member of the evaluation panels for the NEH. In upcoming years, he will be the Wilde Lecturer at Oxford University and the Gifford Lecturer at St. Andrew's University.” - Edited from Yale University Religious Studies description.

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