Quotes about Culture

In these days when anything goes in literature, movies, and even TV, to think there are some places so isolated, so backward, so ill-informed as to what's going on in the world

Look at evangelicals, you can't even use the word "Christmas" any more, Macy's doesn't use the word "Christmas". With me, it is going to stop, it is going to stop, and they understand that.

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

All human activity takes place within a culture and interacts with culture.

I come from a tradition - from the Jewish tradition, which believes in words, in language, in communication.

Shouldn't we be presenting an alternative to the prevailing culture rather than simply mimicking it? What would a church look like that created space for quietness, that bucked the celebrity trend and unplugged from noisy media, that actively resisted our consumer culture? What would worship look like if we directed it more toward God than toward our own amusement?

C. S. Lewis shocked many people in his day when he came out in favor of allowing divorce, on the grounds that we Christians have no right to impose our morality on society at large. Although he would continue to oppose divorce on moral grounds, he maintained the distinction between morality and legality.

The first nation to separate Christianity from government produced perhaps the most religious nation on earth.

Christians obscured the good news by their efforts to restore morality to the broader culture?

Others of us, rightly concerned about issues in a modern "culture war," neglect the church's mission as a haven of grace in this world of ungrace.

The church works best as a separate force, a conscience to society that keeps itself at arm's length from the state. The closer it gets, the less effectively it can challenge the surrounding culture and the more perilously it risks losing its central message. Jesus left his followers the command to make disciples from all nations. We have no charge to "Christianize" the United States or any other country — ?an impossible goal in any case.

The church works best as a force of resistance, a conscience to society that keeps itself at arm's length from the state. The closer it gets, the less effectively it can challenge the surrounding culture and the more perilously it risks losing its central message.