A current fight is over Christian influence in culture. The context of this fight is in large measure the failure of the religious right in the USA to make any tangible progress towards its objectives, alongside a growing emphasis upon the church being ‘missional’. The fight has many elements, and has gone through many rounds, and raises some interesting questions.
 
For instance, when I walk my dogs, am I doing so missionally? Or, should I be missionally walking my dogs? Or, should I just be walking my dogs? And what if my dogs start fighting when I’m walking them – does that affect the missional nature of my dog walking, or just my walk?
 
On one side of the fight are those who argue that everything I do as a Christian should have a missional edge, and that task of the Church is ‘transformative’ – that is, we are seeking to redeem culture. This side of the fight grounds its theology of cultural engagement in the work of Christ in redemption. If Christ has come to bring redemption for sinners, then (goes the logic) surely those who have been redeemed are meant to bring an experience of that redemption to everything. So the workplace, media, arts, sport – culture in general – are to be redeemed and transformed.
 
On the other side of the fight are those who say that Christian cultural engagement is grounded in the work of Christ in creation. This ‘two kingdoms’ approach understands the Christian’s responsibility in culture to be no more than that demanded by God’s command to Adam to steward and rule creation. Christians are citizens of one kingdom, a spiritual one, the visible Church, within which they are to work out their faith and proclaim the gospel. However, they are also citizens of another kingdom, the earthly one, in which they obey the secular authorities, and do their jobs well, but which will one day be obliterated rather than transformed.
 
Within these two positions there is, of course, a great deal of bandwidth, but we can make some broad generalisations about how they play out.
 
The appeal of the ‘transformers’ is easy to see. Theirs is a much louder tub to thump. Rallying cries about redeeming culture, influencing politics and impacting society stir the blood and pull a crowd. There are dangers to this approach though. One is that the focus of cultural redemption invariably seems to slide towards bigging up what a very thin slice of highly talented Christians are involved in. So, being a Christian politician, or TV producer, or sports personality are redeeming, while very little is said about the Christian burger-flipper or dustman, or unemployed. Another danger is the assumption that all human institutions should be Christianized, or that Christian institutions should be created in competition with secular ones. This leads to the establishment of ‘Christian’ (and yes, the quote marks are intentional) schools, businesses and media, and a Christian sub-culture that far from actually shaping culture stands at a rather cheesy distance from it.
 
The 2K’ers also have their appeal. For a start, they are very clear about the Church, and there is not much danger of a social gospel taking over. Also, this can feel a less pressured way to live – walking the dog is just walking the dog, without worrying if I’m having a sufficient impact upon culture as I do so. But the danger of this theology is a tendency to passivity. It is a short step from saying I am not required to try and transform anything to never speaking to anyone about the transforming power of Jesus. There are also arguably larger social consequences. For example, the two kingdoms Lutheranism of Germany seems to have played a significant part in the way so much of the Church rolled over and submitted to Nazi rule.
 
Probably most of us will want to position ourselves somewhere in the middle of these two dogs. Seeking the middle-way sounds very noble, but being caught between two fighting dogs can result in a nasty bite. The best thing would be if we could stop the dogs fighting in the first place, and just get on with our walk.