I. INTRODUCTION
The cultural dimension of Christian experience, which Niebuhr attempted to typify, is essentially more complex that he himself appeared to recognize. In fact, in order to deal with this complexity, Niebuhr categorized Christianity as inextricably of a Western culture to the clear disregard of the realities of Christians in the East, which the apostles too have built into a community of the faithful under Christ. Nevertheless, he dealt with the complexity by presuming that Christianity is essentially a Western cultural community while referring to the target culture as “not a particular phenomenon but the general one”. While this approach simplified for him the establishment of his typology, it did not help scholars in removing the complexity in its use in the study of the Christian churches’ interaction with the pluralized culture in reality.
This discussion, in effect, can only justify the effort by focusing on the main typologies observable in different Christian churches as characterized by evangelism, affluence, Protestant/Orthodox, and cultural diversity of membership. As should be expected in the conceptual limitations of Niebuhr’s typology, there might be churches that exhibits more than one typology. In such cases, the major typologies will be mentioned and briefly described as needed without any presumptions that more typologies can still be found if not possibly even all.
The point is to make an informed estimation of the most feasible Niebuhrian types that can be expectedly discovered in the various Christian church groupings of the today. All these comparative analyses can be found in Section II in its four subsections: A (more evangelical vs. less evangelical churches); B (more affluent vs. less affluent churches); C (Protestant vs. Orthodox/Roman Catholic churches); and D (more vs. less culturally diverse churches).
II. TELEOLOGICAL APPROACHES IN EXPERIENTIAL DIFFERENCES
A. More Evangelical vs. Less Evangelical Churches
More evangelical churches tend to approach culture according to Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture Paradox typology due to its total acceptances of some version of the traditional Calvinist doctrine of the ‘antithesis’, which holds that the human societies are engaged in “a cosmic struggle between belief and unbelief” or “cultures of righteousness and unrighteousness”. As such, the encounter cultural diversity as opportunities to evangelize the nations consistent with Christ’s command in Matthew 28:19 to “make disciples of all the nations”. Moreover, these churches tend to look at culture as “special ‘assignments’” from God who distributes people into diverse cultural settings as part of His saving plan. Thus, in a sense, there is in each culture a collective image of God, which is very close to Niebuhr’s Christ of Culture typology.
Conversely, less evangelical churches, particularly the conservative ones, may avoid engaging themselves in ecumenical activities in an attempt to preserve the distance of Christ from culture, consistent with Niebuhr’s Christ against Culture or Christ above Culture typologies. These churches tend to view Christ as the sole authority over the Christian in a sense that culture becomes an opposition over the Christian soul. This exclusivist approach divides cultures into only two camps: the Christian culture and the pagan culture. Thus, they can either view culture as an enemy of salvation (Christ against Culture) or as a learning tool for salvation (Christ above Culture).
B. More Affluent vs. Less Affluent Churches
Affluence is another classification line wherein difficulty in demarcating churches is problematic. Do ‘less affluent churches’ include or exclude the non-affluent ones? If separating affluent from non-affluent churches can be complicated (e.g. is lack of food on the table at least twice a day the measure of non-affluence?), the demarcation between the more and the less affluent churches can be more tenacious (e.g. does a more affluent church identified as having members capable of donating $1 million annually?). Thus, in the interest of simplicity, more affluent churches will be understood as “affluent” churches (defined has having disproportionately large number of members with upper-level income) and less affluent churches as “non-affluent” churches.
Davidson and Pyle observed that affluent churches are able to organize ecumenical ministries, get highly involved in a full range of community activities and organizations that provide services that improve quality of life in their communities, and the like. These findings indicate that abundance of material resources provide opportunities for Christians to engage others outside their religious cultural milieu, thus, consistent with Niebuhr’s Christ of Culture typology wherein Christ is thought to encounter culture and that no great tension exists between church and world or the social laws and the gospel.
Meanwhile, non-affluent churches are currently experience a wide and increasing gap between rich and poor members with youth attendance dwindling to almost, if not to, nothing. Because religious services had been associated with opportunities for families to build relationships with similar families, the widening economic gap within the non-affluent churches is making it more difficult to continue such inter-family engagement due to the natural discomfort in associating with families from different economic classes in their communities. Consequently, the poorer members end up choosing to cut down their church attendance in order to avoid social discomfiture.
Interestingly, the membership usually do not suffer noticeable decline other than the decline of regular attendance in some church members. However, to the pastor who came to know very well the size of the congregation on Sundays, the difference is clear. When this trend continues, these churches can become isolated from their respective communities and develop an exclusivist (Niebuhr’s Christ against Culture) approach to its cultural environment, which may not be originally a core disposition, but still may constitute its excuse from engaging the culture outside its walls. This them-vs.-us paradigm can result to the weakening of evangelical zeal and the disappearance of a dynamism in their missionary faith.
C. Protestant vs. Orthodox/Catholic Churches
Using the ‘Protestant’ term to generally represent highly diverse denominations of churches makes this commentary on Niebuhr’s typology complex and unmanageable under a limited space as this. Thus, in the interest of simplicity, the term will be interpreted as referent to the traditional Protestant churches (e.g. Calvinists, Lutherans, and Anglicans), even if issues of conservatism and liberalism in these denominations has to be dealt with, which essentially impact on their views of their churches’ encounter with culture. Thus, it will be further assumed that these churches are to a greater extent conservatives in Christian theology. Thus, like the less evangelical churches (in subsection A), traditional and conservative Protestants tend to be exclusivist (Niebuhr’s Christ against Culture) and synthesist (Niebuhr’s Christ above Culture).
Conversely, Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches are essentially Conversionist in approach (Niebuhr’s Christ transforming Culture). These churches are not afraid to engage cultures while recognizing cultural diversity. It views divine will as consisting of an unremitting desire to transform everything in this world, cultures included, into Christ. Since it views creation as a reflection of God’s image albeit flawed by sin, its mission is to redeem all creation in Christ. It believes in engaging culture, each in its specific diversity, in a dialogue in order to provide “a Christian witness that cannot be dissolved into anything else”, even into the culture, in line with Paul’s approach with the Epicureans and Stoics in Acts 17:16-33.
However, these churches are more than that. They can also be synthesists (Niebuhr’s Christ above Culture), looking at the salvation history from the Jewish history as a necessary training for the people of God towards Christ and the nature of things as a foundation upon which Christians must build. Moreover, these churches, particularly the Roman Catholic Church, also has a monastic tradition, which is exclusivist (Niebuhr’s Christ against Culture) in lifestyle but essentially Catholic in faith; thus, cannot be effectively classified using a single typological approach. The monastic lifestyle itself varies from the exclusively secluded Benedictine or Carmelite orders to the socially engaged Franciscan friars. Moreover, actively apostolic orders may vary from the scholarly Jesuits to the socially active Sisters of Charity. These internal diversity itself of the Roman Catholic traditions will escape the Niebuhrian classification.
Moreover, according to McDade, “the truth of Christian faith resonates with the impulses God plants in our nature”, which Christ completes by being divine and by his redemptive sacrifice. Thus, the Roman Catholic Church also approaches culture the accomodationist way.
D. More Culturally Diverse vs. Less Culturally Diverse Churches
The extent of cultural diversity among Christian churches tend to automatically assign them into specific Niebuhrian types of engagement approaches toward culture. More culturally diverse churches are usually large churches and often with global reach, such as the Presbyterians, the Evangelicals, or the Roman Catholics, tend to be accomodationists, conversionists, and even synthesists. While Protestants tend to be accomodationists or synthesists (even exclusivists), they are rarely conversionists, which is apparently an approach distinct to the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. There seems to be in the nature of Protestant theology that brings it to treat culture either as an enemy or a tool for salvation, not as an object itself for transformation.
Meanwhile, less diverse churches tend to be smaller congregations even in large countries, which if located in a less diverse community, can be somewhat homogeneous. In culturally diverse countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, or France, these churches also tend to be of a certain level of diversity. Since most of these churches are most likely Protestant churches (e.g. fundamentalist Christians who believe in Bible-only authority), they tend to mirror protestant approaches, but may also develop exclusivist attitudes towards cultures.
III. CONCLUSION
There is no doubt that the Niebuhr typology of Christian-Culture encounter generates interest when it was written as it is even more today. However, it is clear that this typology is too simplistic to account for the plurality of culture even within a Christian church. Niebuhr’s preference to ignore this plurality ignores the reality of Christian interest in the diversity of cultural norms, erroneously ignoring them in the hope that the complexity of the issue will simply disappear in the disregard. However, such gesture made his typology more than a fancy idea than a useful tool it purported itself to be.
Moreover, the simplistic nature of the Niebuhrian typology has been highlighted with the Protestant churches, whether evangelicals or not, in exhibiting at least two approaches in engaging culture and the Roman Catholic Church, which has the unique monastic tradition that espouses exclusivist lifestyle while still embracing the catholic conversionist and synthesist approaches.
With the glaring limitations in the Niebuhrian system, it must be high time to cease analyzing this typological system and proceed in improving it into something more useful from the original intention of systematizing the manner in which Christian churches engage a highly diverse global collection of cultures.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Davidson, James D. and Pyle, Ralph E. “Passing the Plate in Affluent Churches: Why Some
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