I’m reading Andy Crouch’s Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling in preparation for an intensive course this upcoming week at Fuller – Catalyzing Faith Communities – with Erwin Raphael McManus and Eric Michael Bryant.

It’s a decent read so far, examining the history of and theological rationale for people of faith engaging the surrounding culture. I was disheartened, however, by Crouch’s reading of Christianity’s “breakthrough.” After literally no discussion of the first four centuries of Christian faith, he asserts

At the time of Emperor Constantine came the extraordinary breakthrough in which Christianity became the established religion of the empire. (Culture Making, 80)

As if this was a good thing? And, are we really to leave behind without so much as a footnote the “cultural good” of the early church?:

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Tags: Culture Making
Categories: Pages

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