Culture Trumps Religion, Every Time: The Ethno-Cultural Challenge for the Church

There are various expressions of culture. There is organizational culture, institutional culture, generational culture, corporate culture, gender culture, national culture, ethno-culture, and much more. This book is an advocate for the significance of ethno-culture. In recent years much has been written and debated about the multicultural expression of the church. The church planting movement is deeply split over the most effective way to evangelize the world. There are those who are strong advocates for starting ethnic specific churches, while others propose that the only authentic expression of God's Kingdom is a place where all cultures can come together in collective worship. Those who pander to the latter are quick to cite Dr. Martin Luther King's opprobrium that "Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America."Culture Trumps Religion, Every Time seeks to advance the argument that the ethnic specific congregation is not a step-child of the "real church," but is indeed an authentic and genuine expression of humanity's response to God's call to worship and to serve. Culture is God's choice to express God's fascination with diversity, but this choice has been maligned by those who mistakenly interpret it to mean that unless all people groups worship under the rubric of uniformity it is incomplete and even, "unholy". This book makes the case for recognizing the dated conclusion arrived at by the missiologists Peter Wagner and Donald McGavran that "people like to become Christians without crossing racial, linguistic or class barriers". Whether this conclusion is scientifically grounded is not the task of this book, but we have a mandate to be pragmatic and practical if we are to take seriously the intent of our fidelity to the mandate of the Great Commission.Furthermore, this book opens the door for more discourse about the significance of culture as it took its significant place in biblical history. The Bible is a running commentary on cultural exclusivism. Is this a good thing, or is it a bad omen? Whichever currency one finds to be appropriate, the fact remains that God has a preferential option for cultural awareness. Continuously through the ranting of prophet, priest, or people, it was clear that the people of Israel were to cherish their culture because God did, or so they understood. This preservation of the uniqueness of culture finally found itself squarely in the New Testament oracles through statements like, "this day salvation has come to the Jews."Culture and religion are not enemies. They are not at war with each other. Rather, when appropriately recognized, they complement each other. Culture Trumps Religion, Every Time offers a practical resource to address the deficits that surface when the latent power of ethno-culture is not recognized.

Author: Oliver Raphael Phillips

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Publication Date: Jul 17, 2013

Number of Pages: 284 pages

Binding: Paperback or Softback

ISBN-10: 1481994611

ISBN-13: 9781481994613