Slide 1

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 2

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 3

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 4

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 5

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 6

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 7

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 8

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 9

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 10

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 11

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 12

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 13

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 14

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 15

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 16

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 17

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 18

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 19

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 20

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 21

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 22

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 23

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture


Slide 24

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Christians are called to
redeem cultures not just
individuals

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

People keep their faith locked in a private sphere of “religious
truth”
 People need to develop a worldview in their own life and work
 Our purpose for the next several weeks is learn how we can
liberate the Church from its cultural captivity, allowing its power to
transform the world
 “The gospel is like a caged lion, it does not need to be defended,
it just needs to be let of its cage.” – Spurgeon




To unlock the cage we need to be convinced that:
 “Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth-truth about

the whole of reality.” – Francis Schaeffer

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Elements of Civilization Evangelism
Theology
Sociology

Governmnt Kingdom
Morals
Biology

Psychology
Philosophy

Economics

Math

Education

Civil Law
Literature

Church & Culture

Arts
History Geography Authority

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Evangelicals no longer enjoy a position of cultural dominance in
America
 Two major events in the 1900s changed the landscape
 The Scopes Trial
 The Rise of Theological Modernism
 Religious conservatives turned inward, becoming separatists with
a fortress mentality – “Circle the wagons!”
 In the 1940s, neo-conservatives argued that Christians are not
called to escape culture but to engage it


 They sought to build a redemptive vision that would embrace both individuals

as well as social structures/institutions


Lacking the conceptual tools many turned to political activism

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture





Many Christians thought that politics was the
means to correct the moral and social decline in
America
Resulted in some positive results







More Christians running for political office
Voter registrations organized by churches
Increase in public policy groups
New Christian publications and radio programs offer
commentary on a variety of aspects of public life

Bottom line: Didn’t have the impact that was
hoped for

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Evangelicals put all their eggs in one basket
 “They leaped into political activism as the quickest,

surest way to make a difference in the public arenafailing to realize that politics tends to reflect culture
and not the other way around




Real change must begin with culture because
culture determines our politics
Best way to change culture is by Christians,
following God’s call, reforming culture from
within their local sphere of influence

 Families, churches, schools, businesses, institutions



To do this we must develop a biblical worldview

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Author John Seel pens words that apply in principle to Christians
everywhere and summarize well the believer’s perspective on
political involvement:

A politicized faith not only blurs our priorities, but weakens our
loyalties. Our primary citizenship is not on earth but in heaven.
… Though few evangelicals would deny this truth
in theory, the language of our spiritual citizenship frequently
gets wrapped in the red, white and blue. Rather than acting as
resident aliens of a heavenly kingdom, too often we sound [and
act] like resident apologists for a Christian America. … Unless we
reject the false reliance on the illusion of Christian America,
evangelicalism will continue to distort the gospel and thwart a
genuine biblical identity….. American evangelicalism is now
covered by layers and layers of historically shaped attitudes that
obscure our original biblical core. (The Evangelical Pulpit [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1993], 106-7)

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Raised in the faith, young people go off to school and abandon
their faith – why?
 Our young people have not been taught how to develop a biblical
worldview
 Christianity has been limited to “specialized areas of religious
belief and personal devotion”


 Christianity has been reduced to two spheres of influence- evangelism

and morals, and these are now under attack to have them removed
from us

People are being taught, even in the church, that “the heart is
what we use for religion and the head is what we use for science.”
 For young Christians to survive they must be trained to develop a
“Christian Mind.”


 Training young people to develop a Christian mind is no longer an

option: it is a necessary part of their survival equipment.”

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The Great Divide: The
Heart and the Brain

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

The sacred realm is limited to worship, religion, and
personal morality
 The secular realm includes science, politics,
economics and things that fall into the public sector


 “The dichotomy in our minds is the greatest barrier to

liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of
culture today.”



A broader split is the public / private one

 State, academia, conglomerates and large corporations

versus family, church, and personal relationships



Public and secular claim to be scientific and value
free – values are part of the private sector of personal
choice

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Private

Personal
preferences
Public

Scientific
Knowledge
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Values

Individual
Choice
Facts

Binding on
everyone
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Upper Story

Nonrational ,
Noncognitive
Lower Story

Rational,
Verifiable
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Postmodernism
Subjective, relative
to particular groups
Modernism

Objective,
universally valid
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture









This division is the single greatest weapon used to delegitimize
the biblical perspective in the public square today
Secularists do not need to attack religion as false-they place
religion in the value sphere
This takes it out of the realm of true and false
Secularists then assure us that the respect religion while deny that
it has a place of relevance in the public realm
Religion becomes a mere matter of private feelings and the two
story grid becomes a gatekeeper that determines what should be
taken seriously as knowledge and what is just ‘wishful thinking”
"The fact / value split allows the metaphysical naturalists to mollify
the potentially troublesome religious people by assuring them
that science does not rule our religious beliefs (so long as it does
not pretend to be knowledge)." - Phillip Johnson

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Non-believers filter what we say through a mental fact /value
grid
 What we assert as an objective moral truth they hear

“our subjective bias”
 “The fact/value grid instantly dissolves away the
objective content of our belief into the public
discussion unless we first find ways to get past the
gatekeeper.” – Nancy Pearcey



The fact / values divide is the key factor in the “cultural
captivity of the gospel”
 Christianity is trapped in the upper story of privatized

values
 It has marginalized Christian truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



Anything that is labeled as religious is placed in the upper
story of values – where it is no longer recognized as
objective knowledge
 In debate of embryonic stem cell research Christopher Reeves

stated "When matters of public policy are debated, no religions
should have a seat at the table.“



We must overcome the dichotomy between public and
private; fact and value; and secular and sacred
 The gospel must be released from cultural captivity and

restored to a status where it is recognized as public truth
 "The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in
contemporary western culture is the [church's] accommodation
. . .to the fact-value dichotomy." Michael Goheen
 We must recover a holistic view of total truth if the gospel is
going to be set free to be a redemptive force across all of life
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture



A biblical worldview is an informed perspective on all
reality
 It is the truth about total reality
 Provides a mental map to navigate the world effectively
 It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life





It helps us answer the fundamental questions of life
Man needs a map to live by
Man’s choices are ultimately shaped by his beliefs or
religious commitment
 Our lives are shaped by the god we worship-either the God

of the Bible or some substitute deity
Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

It deepens our spiritual character and the character of
our lives
 The beginning of a Christian worldview is the
submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe –
we need to allow ourselves to be taught by Him
 Our motivation is found in Lk 10.27


 He answered ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.”


God is the Lord of all creation and we can only
acknowledge His Lordship by interpreting the world
He created in light of His truth

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Church and Culture

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture

Come to grips with our understanding of the
church and world in which we live
2. Understand why untruth is so easily accepted
as truth
3. Develop a biblical worldview
4. Understand other worldviews
5. Creation is the starting point of all worldviews
6. A historical review of the development of
worldviews
7. Become conformed to the likeness of Christ
1.

Church & Culture

001 Introduction to Church & Culture