Which Camp Should we Stake our Tents?
I love diving into worldviews and how they shape the way we live our lives and engage in culture. My academic journey has led me to spend a significant amount of time reflecting on how a Christian is to engage culture, and I’ve often done so through the lens of comparing different worldview “maps.” For instance, in the U.S., many Christians assume without question that playing drums for worship on a Sunday morning is perfectly acceptable. I recognize that there are exceptions but many modern churches will include drums. Yet when I lived in Kenya, I had to discern whether playing drums for worship was appropriate in our church community, since drums were traditionally used only in calling the spirits in animistic practices. It became necessary to overlay our worldview maps and discern a faithful path forward. We eventually chose to make our own drum—one not tied to animism or witchcraft—and worship God with it.
When Christians consider how to engage culture, we often find ourselves falling into one of two primary camps: protection-oriented or engagement-focused.
The protection-oriented camp emphasizes that this world is temporary, passing, and that we should set our minds on things above, not on earthly things (Col. 3:2). The instinct here is often a withdrawal from culture. Taken to the extreme, this leads to communities like the Amish near my city, who separate themselves from aspects of culture like electricity because they view it as cultural rather than spiritual.
A prominent voice in this protection-oriented camp is A.W. Tozer. In his book Culture, he likens the church to an ark—saved from a devastating flood and attempting to remain separate.[1] Christians, then, call others out of the floodwaters and into the ark to be saved. When culture is viewed this way, everything outside the church can seem threatening, and the impulse is to hide. Jeff Myers observes, “A common temptation among Christians is to keep faith locked securely inside church.”[2] In my local context, I’ve seen this perspective fueling the homeschool movement. While it is not wrong to want to educate our children well, many families I know are choosing to homeschool primarily as an attempt to withdraw completely from culture. Many of my friends in this protection-oriented camp do not know anyone outside their little Christian communities. They often describe how they do not know any non-Christian. Tozer’s model of pulling people out of the flood waters seems challenging when immersed in the Christian community.
The other camp—the one where I have pitched my tent—is the camp of engagement. This does not mean uncritically embracing culture, but rather entering it with a kingdom-centered lens. As Andy Crouch writes, “The only way to change culture is to create more of it.”[3] Likewise, theologian Kevin Vanhoozer argues that the church is called to live out the expression of our faith within the culture we inhabit. He writes, “The church’s mission is not to seek utopia, but to be a eutopia: a good place in which the good news of reconciliation in Christ is exhibited in bodily form.”[4]
This engagement-oriented posture does not mean passively absorbing culture; it means challenging and reshaping it through Christ-centered participation—in art, science, politics, economics, and beyond. Over a century ago, Abraham Kuyper pushed back against the retreat of Christians from scientific inquiry. He encouraged believers to “take hold of science as an instrument for propagating our faith-conviction.”[5] Kuyper himself modeled this by entering the public sphere and eventually serving as the Prime Minister of the Netherlands.
Many modern theologians encourage Christians not to merely float along in the ark while the cultural waters rage but to actively cultivate and transform the world as we seek to make the kingdom of heaven visible on earth. David Hegeman writes, “We therefore have a great hope that we will be able now and in the future to fulfill the commandment that was set before us in the Garden of Eden to transform the earth.”[6] Richard Mouw, in his work on Isaiah 60, makes a similar case for the redemption of culture.[7] His writing helped me choose to use a drum in our Kenyan village church—not to embrace animism, but to redeem what had been misused. What had once been associated with calling spirits became an instrument of praise to our Father.
Another influential voice in this conversation is Miroslav Volf. Volf offers pathways for Christians to navigate the cultural world thoughtfully and faithfully. His words sum up much of how I seek to live publicly. He writes:
“Properly understood, the Christian faith is neither coercive nor idle. As a prophetic religion, Christian faith will be an active faith, engaged in the world in a noncoercive way—offering blessing to our endeavors, effective comfort in our failures, moral guidance in a complex world, and a framework of meaning for our lives and our activities.”[8]
This is the posture I seek to adopt: not withdrawal, not assimilation, but Christ-centered engagement—redeeming, restoring, creating, and bearing witness to the kingdom here and now.
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[1] A. W. Tozer, Culture: Living as Citizens of Heaven on Earth–Collected Insights from A.W. Tozer (Moody Publishers, 2016), 57.
[2] Jeff Myers, Understanding the Culture: A Survey of Social Engagement (David C. Cook, 2017), 55.
[3] Andy Crouch, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (Intervarsity Press, 2008), 67.
[4] Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Faith Speaking Understanding (Westminster John Knox Press, 2014), 178.
[5] Abraham Kuyper, Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science and Art, English Ed (Christian Library Press, 2011), 94.
[6] David Bruce Hegeman, Plowing in Hope Toward a Biblical Theology of Culture (Canon Press, 1999), 71.
[7] Richard J. Mouw, When the Kings Come Marching In, Revised (William Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002).
[8] Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Public Faith in Action: How to Engage with Commitment, Conviction, and Courage, Reprint edition (Brazos Press, 2017), 54.
About the Author
Adam Cheney
I grew up in California, spent five years living along the beautiful coast of Kenya and now find myself working with refugees in the snow crusted tundra of Minnesota. My wife and I have seven children, four of whom have been adopted. I spend my time drinking lots of coffee, working in my garden, and baking sourdough bread.One response to “Which Camp Should we Stake our Tents?”
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Adam,
Didn’t know you had Amish around you. Do they have boombox buggies. This is from August in front of my house, a little Katy Perry https://photos.app.goo.gl/hEitiADxScMemyjD7
Shortly after they passed by a couple more buggies came up the road and in front of my neighbor’s house they were pulled over by the State Patrol and arrested for drunk driving.
We have several Christian schools in our area, but we never considered sending our kids. We felt our kid’s schools were safe and that our kids needed to be a witness to their classmates. It is amazing the friendships our two boys developed while in high school. Our two girls had some good friends as well but not as strong as our boys.
What I find though is that we live in a very conservative area and I feel many parents want to turn our public schools into a Christian school. They are extremely cautious about what is taught and most of our local schools have release time for Christian education. Do you see anything similar in your local schools? I know you previous voiced some people being frustrated with the idea of incorporating other religious holidays into the school calendar.