Counter-culture v. gospel culture

In the introduction to his Western Culture in Gospel Context, David J. Kettle surveys a variety of models for Christian witness:

1. The witness of traditional religious conformity, which at its best seeks for all aspects of culture to resonate with a Christian worldview, and at its worst leads to nominalism or (worse -) Christian imperialism. 
2. The witness of traditional religious symbolism and art, which though it can often preserve a sense of the transcendent and sacred can also become opaque and tokenistic. 
3. The witness of an appeal to cultural identity, which takes seriously the influence Christianity has had on Western cultures but can all too easily lead to a tribalism which excludes non-Western Christians and non-Christian people and influences in the West.
4. The witness of a parallel Christian culture, that avoids many of the pitfalls of closing the gap between church and culture by seeking to maintain this distinction, but can tend towards a kind of gnosticism that in attempting to keep the world out of the church (perhaps inadvertently) keeps the church out of the world.
5. The witness of consumer religion, which has uncritically adopted the dominant spiritual paradigms (business shamanism, individualist consumerism) of Western culture and adapted Christianity and the church to reflect it.

While this typology is new (and I'd suggest, provisional and not exhaustive), none of the particular models is. I've heard many faithful and thoughtful Christians advocate the best (and some of the worst) of each of these models at some point, but the third seems to be increasingly popular in conservative Christianity in the simplistic formulation "Australia is (or was founded as) a Christian country," usually implying that other Christians are more Australian and should have more power than people of other faiths or none. 

However, it was how Kettle presented the fourth model that especially caught my attention. He says that those whose agenda it is to oppose or resist culture (that is, be counter-cultural) are no less captivated by culture; it remains the host culture and not the gospel that determines how Christians witness. This is seen most clearly in the peculiarly modern form of fundamentalism that arose as a response to modern liberalism. The fundamentalists thought they had avoided the cultural compromises of liberalism, but were no less shaped by their modern context. But the same possibility awaits me: as I seek to engage the individualism and consumerism of Western culture my priority needs to be not responding to greed and selfishness in its current cultural manifestations, but rather the generosity and hospitality of God in the gospel. 

New books

Recently two more books arrived from Wipf and Stock on the topic for my masters thesis: spirituality for mission.

I've started reading the first of these: David J. Kettle 2012 Western culture in gospel context: theological bearings for mission and spirituality.

Sadly, Kettle who was the coordinator of the Gospel and Our Culture Network in Great Britain died last year. Already this book is a rare find: lucidly written, theologically astute and with profound insight. It is a masterful piece of missiology.

Cape Town Commitment

While other bloggers have already had more detailed discussions of this document, it still doesn't seem to be getting the attention it deserves. Neither critical or polemical, it is a current exposition of much of what is good and right about contemporary evangelicalism. This is no accident - it draws from the best of a century of mission work and marks the beginning of its maturation: the breadth of world Christianity represented is unprecedented.

So rather than simply rehashing what's already available, I thought I'd point out that a short précis is available here. This because I've not yet read and pondered another chapter of Bonhoeffer's Discipleship, but that's what I'm off to do now.

The full text of the Cape Town Commitment is also available online.

Pilgrimage as formation for chaplaincy

Both my pilgrimage along el camino and my week with the brothers at Taizé are part of an independent guided study subject undertaken towards a coursework masters, with the topic 'Missional Spirituality'.

My particular mission context is the Australian Defence Force and that is why there are two aspects to my study tour. Far more than most westerners, soldiers are communal people; they eat and sleep, party and fight, live and die together; something that so many churches can learn from. Oh, and soldiers no more choose their comrades than Christians choose their brothers and sisters. This is why I'll be spending a week at Taizé with Catholic and Protestant brothers: eating, sleeping, playing and praying with those who share the rhythms that I need to develop for a spirituality of mission.

But soldiers are also nomads. It is because of their love for their country that they do not stay within its borders. They are a people who belong to each other more than they belong to a particular place. Soldiers also know solitude, silence and walking – this is why I'll be hiking 900km of the camino and keeping silence between breakfast and lunch.

So during the study tour I'll be wearing my boots: having something with me – on me – at all times to remind me why I'm walking or staying, why I'm on my own or in the monastic community, and why I'm silent or speaking to strangers.