hello and bienvenidos - welcome to Contextualize This, a Podcast that attempts to provide a diversified and contextualized perspective on today’s relevant topics. I am your host, Norlan Hernández.
This is EPISODE 1 titled Understanding the impact of culture on faith. In Today’s episode we will:
Provide a broad definition of culture
Give a brief evaluation of how faith has viewed culture
Evaluate the impact culture has on faith
Let’s start with the definition
Definition Culture is one of the most contested and complicated terms to define. There have been many discussions and subsequent rebuttals made by anthropologists, sociologists, missiologists, philosophers and so on.
I do not intend to provide the perfect answer. More than anything, I wish to provide a starting point (maybe even at the risk of oversimplifying the term).
That being said - Broadly speaking, culture can be defined as the shared set of practices and behaviors, traditions, knowledge, understanding, and artifacts such as music and art, and so on, by a group of people.
There are many ways with which culture is discussed. For this conversation, it is important to note that I do not limit the conversation of culture to ethnicity. I intend to use a broader understanding which will lend itself to acknowledging and understanding the different dynamics of meta and micro-cultures.
By this I mean we can speak broadly about the culture within a society (culturally, ethnically, linguistically, religiously, and nationally speaking) as well as the unlimited possibilities of subcultures (sports, music, hobbies). All of which share some commonalities.
I also want to be very clear with my line of argument here: culture is found EVERYWHERE, even within faith establishments. There has been a tendency to dichotomize or have a simple two part position and see culture and faith through the lens of sacred and profane. There is a lack of understanding in how they interact and engage one another. Hence the motivation behind this episode.
Let’s take a quick look at this relationship.
Culture and Faith
How faith groups have interacted with culture has varied by context. There is no one way that describes an entire group, denomination, or people regarding their engagement with culture. So, the following is limited to my own experience. Hopefully, some of it resonates with you or gets your thoughts going. I also hope this conversation helps you think through your own context using the tools, experiences, and examples provided here.
From my personal experience, again - a Latin American Pentecostal context - it has been one of almost complete detachment. This has been so in the context of both Nicaragua as well as in the US - more specifically in L.A.
With my community, there has been a tendency to completely detach from one’s sociocultural context. By this, I mean that the church has made a stark division between the sacred and the profane (spiritual and worldly), culture is found within the latter. Because this is so, anything found outside the church is synonymous with sin. Therefore there is also a tendency to spiritualize everything, including the very real and concrete problems the members of a society face today, such as wars, illness, and natural disasters. To put it simply anything within the church walls is good, anything outside of the church walls is bad.
Let me give you a quick simple example of how this has been true in my life and my experience. I remember growing up listening to preachers say that what we call today TV was an instrument of the devil. Additionally, I remember the countless times my mother did not let me go to the movies because she considered it a sin. Let me take it one more step which may be a little controversial within my community - music. It is a common understanding that the Latin American community and culture there is a distinct taste for music and dancing. Latin America is known for the cumbia, hachada, salsa and the accompanying movements.
I remember my struggle with music. I would listen to music that was not considered Christian (such as the genres just mentioned and once I came back to the US it was rap, reggae, rock, r&b) and feeling completely guilty about doing so. I would spend an enormous amount of time talking to God and repenting about this sin.
This posture towards the things that I found outside of the church walls created a clear division between the faith and the surrounding culture. I struggled with my ethnic and cultural identity because everything was seen through the lens of what The church considered sacred. However there was a real lack of understanding of the Dynamics of culture and faith and how they interact. This this gap contributed to a lot of confusion concerning what it means to be human, Latin American, and Christian in a real and historical world. It also made it difficult to understand how God intended me to live a life that was filled with so much culture. Why would God allow me to be born in a culture that is so sinful? I wrestled with the connection between faith and culture.
It wasn’t until after bible school and seminary that I found folks that critically engaged these topics (which aren’t discussed enough in the church night I add). These great minds have looked into and evaluated the topic of culture from a Christian perspective. I will not bore you with names and technicalities. But here is a brief summary of one example by Helmut Richard Niebuhr - a North American theologian.
He claimed there were at least 5 ways to categorize this relationship (1):
Christ Against Culture – Christ is in opposition to culture and calls us into radical opposition. Anabaptists, as well as some fundamentalists and Pentecostal groups, are examples we might typically associate with this type.
Christ of Culture – Christ and his followers embrace culture because the culture has substantially embraced him. Stackhouse suggests that Puritan New England may have approximated this posture.
Christ Above Culture – Christ comes to Culture, which is a mixture of good and bad, to instruct and improve it through his church. Thomas Aquinas was an exemplar of this model.
Christ in Paradox with Culture – Christ calls us to be citizens of two worlds. Some have suggested This is often identified with Lutheran theology.
Christ Transforming Culture – Christ calls us to redeem the world by bearing witness to him and work for the transformation of individuals and institutions.
Other typologies and assessments are available and speak to the cultural, social, and political aspects of how Christians or people of faith view and evaluate culture.
How Culture Shapes Us
If it has not been clear up to this point, let me be clear: My claim is that culture is everywhere and it shapes us. It defines our behavior as well as our beliefs. Culture can be intentionally nurtured (think of sports, music, hobbies) or subconsciously consumed (think of belief systems and traditions). In short, the context of our upbringing and current reality influences how we see and experience the world.
Stop for a moment and think hard and deeply about something you are really passionate about or something you really dislike. Now, ask yourself - why is thisso? Why do you have a passion for or why do you dislike something so much? Here is a personal example: I once got lost in thought and asked a seemingly existential question: why do I like ketchup so much? I literally put it on everything - my arroz y frijoles, cup of noodles, I mix it with crema centroamericana and make it into a dip for my hot Cheetos. I categorize it as an existential question because it took me down a path of acknowledging some of the cultural and family factors that were at play - ketchup has been very accessible in Nicaragua. It is inexpensive. It is tasty. Additionally, I was influenced by my oldest brother - he loves ketchup too. Hence, my culture and my family very much influenced my unorthodox affinity to ketchup. Yes, this is an oversimplified example. However, nothing is too small nor too big to evaluate within this conversation. If you think hard enough and long enough you will find many factors that contribute to the lens through which you see the world. In other words our context, in part, creates our worldview.
Let me give you another example - a more substantive one. I came to a crossroads with my faith a few years ago. At this point, I had attended a bible institute for 4 years and had gotten my Master’s degree in theology. As already mentioned, The academic journey helped me think more critically about my faith. Part of what I was processing was the many points of tension I found within my church community. These tensions were created because of an unhealthy fusion of cultural values with Christian claims. To use the typology I just introduced, my community was under the Christ against culture category. Cultural Claims were then “christianized”.
This tension interested me so much that I ran a case study with three participants from a Central American Pentecostal church in los angeles. Dress attire, among other findings, surfaced as contested topics within this context. Traditionally speaking, women are required to wear the appropriate attire at church (and if you are very conservative this also means outside of church). This means a decent non-revealing shirt, skirt, or dress. However, the participants of this study claimed they did not agree with the rigidity with which this is enforced in the church. Two of them made an excellent point that this was a matter of displaying honor and respect. However, they argued that they understood honor and respected differently than their previous generation of church members and leaders. For them, it was less about the appearance and more about the internalized morality and external display of obedience to God’s word that mattered most. Additionally, two of the three respondents argued the part of sin was always associated with the woman, rather than placing the moral responsibility on men as well. This reminds us of the women brought before Jesus in John 8.
Similarly, I have found, experientially and in research, that gender scripts play a role in the many tensions we experience within the Latin American church due to the unhealthy fusion of cultural values with Christian claims. With a little research, one is able to see that an understanding of gender scripts within the church is very much influenced by cultural gender scripts, which scholars have termed as machismo and marianismo (its often ignored counterpart). Research has also made the connection that some aspects of these gender scripts are informed or have a spiritual foundation, hence the term maria-nismo which includes the name Maria (Mary) the mother of Jesus.
Culturally speaking, gender scripts are very present within the Latin American community - be it in latin America or within Latin American communities around the globe. These gender scripts position men as the head of the house, breadwinners, and rule-makers while women are static, submissive, caregivers and child-bearers. However, more and more we are seeing that women are not subscribing to these scripts without evaluation. In the US, it is a common understanding that more women earn college degrees than men, even though there is still a very serious salary gap between the two genders. I won’t go there today.
Women are breaking the mold and rewriting their narratives, which includes pursuing professional careers. I am a huge advocate of this. I love to see women empowered. I am always happy to be an advocate, an ally, and a cheerleader. This may be so because of my mother’s influence in my life. Oh, how I wish she would have had someone to be rooting for her! My father was never really in the picture and my mother always displayed a strong, empowered, go-getter, and loving and caring character. It is also worth mentioning that having a wife and a daughter and wanting the best for them also influenced my posture.
I take this same posture when it comes to the church. I do believe women can be pastors. I do believe they can be leaders. I do believe women can do just as good a job as anyone else. I do not believe that a female pastor is only possible when being married to a pastor or by being the widow of a pastor. Both of which have been the case within the circles I have been part of.
Theologically speaking, I see many examples of how Jesus affirmed women. In case you didn't know, there were women in Jesus’s ministry. Additionally, some of those women were wealthy and helped fund his ministry (see Luke 8 for an example). Furthermore, Jesus treated women equally when it came to discipleship. This is made clear by Mary’s action to sit and be discipled by Jesus in Luke 10. In Jesus’s time and context, it was not common for women to sit at the teacher’s feet and be discipled. Yet, Jesus welcomes it!
Yes, there is a natural difference between men and women. God created them both with a purpose. For this episode, suffice it to say in God’s economy, gender scripts work differently. Our job is to be sensitive to the cultural values we place and how we enforce them within our spiritual journey.
Summary The purpose of this episode was not to judge Latin American Pentecostal culture. I am also not attempting to discredit my tradition theologically, spiritually, or culturally. On the contrary, my love and commitment to this tradition causes me to be intentional about its evaluation with the purpose of progress and clarity. I have come across many pentecostal christians, young and old, that struggle with the same things I’ve outlined here.
So, let me sum it all up: I’ve defined culture broadly as a shared set of practices and behaviors, traditions, knowledge, understanding, and artifacts such as music and art, and so on, by a group of people. In addition, I claimed that culture is found everywhere, even with faith establishments. An example of how scholars have evaluated the interaction between faith and culture was provided. And lastly, I ended with a claim that culture shapes us. I provided some examples of how this has been the case in the Latin American Pentecostal circles I have been a part of.
Outro: Thanks for listening to Contextualize This with Norlan Hernandez. If you like the show subscribe! I also encourage you to write a review, this is your way of helping make this podcast better. If you want to know more or wish to connect with me, check out my page - NorlanHernandez.com.
Join us next time when we talk about how faith can impact culture.
1 - Kruse Kronicle. Best of it: Revisiting Niebuhr's Typology. Retrieved from https://krusekronicle.typepad.com/kruse_kronicle/2009/05/best-of-it-revisiting-niebuhrs-typology.html#.XrBtIBNKjGI
