MODERN AMERICAN RELIGION, VOLUME 1: THE IRONY OF IT ALL
1893-1919
Martin E. Marty
The University of Chicago Press, December 1986
$24.95, cloth
Being "in the world, but not of it" has been the most important ethical concern of Christianity since it's beginning. The relationship between Christ and "the world" (i.e., culture) continues to be an enduring concern, expressing itself differently under varying historical circumstances. Each believer's Concept On Of Christ (i.e., the whole Christian tradition) influences his participation in the wider culture around him, and his involvement in culture shapes his understanding of Christ. These assumptions function as the prologue to H. Richard Niebuhr's classic study of religion in society, Christ and Culture, first published in 1951. In this work, Reinhold's brother on the Yale Divinity School faculty gave us a then-novel typology by which to view the worldly and other worldly behavior of Christendom and assess its impact on culture, and vice versa. Here he discerns five main kinds of relationships between church and world held by different groups within Christianity, historically considered. Then, like a good sociologist and ethicist, he describes each grouping objectively, setting forth their goals, their strengths and shortcomings, and in so doing gives us a finely-drawn map to use to make sense of the way Christians have lived and acted within society.
In Niebuhr's typology, the two extreme positions are "Christ against culture" and "the Christ of culture." The first of these "ideal types" gives all authority to Christ and rejects culture's claim to authority. Here God and the world are inherently opposed and the Christian can love only the former. "Civilization," represented by the wider culture, is equated with corruption and sin. This position is epitomized by monasticism and by thinkers like Leo Tolstoy, who took Christ literally. Niebuhr criticizes the Christ against culture, however, because persons adopting this stance are mistaken in thinking they can depend on Christ alone, and thus reject culture; for an individual's very habits, language, and reason are culturally derived. When any group relates itself only to Christ and not to Goal the Creator, it unwittingly renounces the creation as evil and unnecessary. But the second of Niebuhr's ideal types does the opposite. "The Christ of culture" identifies Jesus with what is the greatest in one's own culture, and sees him as the one who fulfills that culture's best. There is no conflict here between church and world and Niebuhr associates this position with the Christian Gnostics, who interpreted Christ solely in terms of their own culture, and with the "culture Protestants" (like Albert Ritschl), who emerged out of Continental liberalism in the nineteenth century. And he is no less critical of this type than the first, because it accommodates Christ to culture only by distorting the historical Jesus to fit its own particular mold. Here Christian believers fail to realize that all culture, even their own, is pervaded by sin.
Niebuhr's final three approaches to the problem of Christianity and culture differ from the first two by affirming both Christ and culture. Admitting the universality of sin, they discern the way Christ's demands run counter to culture; and yet they view culture as a good thing, arising from God the Creator. First among these, the "Christ above culture" position seeks a synthesis between
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