How and where do the results of a 2006 ELCA survey and H. Richard Niebuhr’s 1951 text Christ and Culture intersect? Using Niebuhr’s typology, the author analyzes the varied and sometimes contradictory ways ELCA congregations understand their activity in the public arena.

In September 2007, the Research and Evaluation unit of the ELCA reported on a 2006 ELCA Congregational Survey of 1,000 congregations which covered congregational and leadership characteristics with special reference to church growth.

The writers said that many congregations exist along a “fragility continuum” from the most to least vulnerable. his is especially so, they say, for small congregations — those with 100 people or fewer at Sunday worship — which is the case for 56 percent of ELCA congregations. The report concludes by urging the church to discuss “creatively engaging the religious marketplace for the sake of the Gospel without abandoning the integrity of faith.” ¹

In this reflection, I wish to ask how well we are serving as a vehicle of the Gospel to the broader culture and what we might do to strengthen this engagement.

Still-Relevant Text
Please pull off your shelf and crack open — literally, because the glue in the binding is probably dried — H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture, first published in 1951.² Long before the term religious marketplace was ever used, Niebuhr conceived a typology for comparing the way different faith traditions relate Christ to culture. He sought to help the curious discover, think about, compare, and respect variations and likenesses.

Martin Marty, in his foreword to the 50th anniversary edition of Christ and Culture, calls it a “classic”—“a work of genius that a later culture must take into account.” ³ Indeed, ELCA seminaries continue to use or refer to it. Gettysburg Seminary Academic Dean Robin Steinke says she wants seminary students “to become keenly aware of this approach, then creatively re-imagine the current cultural issues and critically identify ways to effectively engage the culture with the mission of Christ right now.” ⁴

Niebuhr’s Five Types
In Christ and Culture, Niebuhr addresses what he describes as the “enduring problem” of how Christ relates to culture or civilization. He suggests five answers to the enduring problem, which he characterizes as “types.” The first answer is Christ against culture (opposition type), which accentuates Christ’s lordship and rejects culture’s own claim to loyalty. Sectarian Christianity is one important representative of this type. Second is Christ of culture (agreement type) in which Jesus is understood as part of culture: an educator, a philosopher, a reformer. Niebuhr associates liberal Christianity and civil religion with this approach. These first two answers represent extreme positions of separation or amalgamation.

The remaining three types constitute what Niebuhr called the “church of the center.” Christ above culture (synthetic type) affirms both Christ and culture and is represented in the Roman Catholic tradition. Then comes Christ and culture in paradox, in which Christ and culture relate in a dualistic way (hence, dualist type) “holding together as well as distinguishing between loyalty to Christ and responsibility to culture.” ⁵ Lutheranism is representative of this type. The final church of the center type is Christ the transformer of culture (conversionist type). This answer adopts an affirmative and hopeful stance toward culture because people are “empowered selves.” ⁶ Historically, Calvinism has embodied this answer.

Christ and Culture in Paradox
Readers of Christ and Culture have often mistakenly assumed that Christ and culture are identified with church and world so that the types characterize the ways the church relates to the world. Niebuhr, however, saw the church as part of culture. If the church is part of culture, then I believe it is possible to see several ways Christ relates to ELCA culture. This interplay then affects the way we, our congregations and leadership present ourselves to the broader culture.

The 2006 Congregational Survey points to what I believe are three hybrid versions of the dualist type, Christ and culture in paradox: dualist-conversionist, dualist-opposition, and dualist-synthetic.

The first hybrid group is dualist but with a pull toward the conversionist type and is illustrated by the majority of survey respondents. According to the survey, ELCA pastors overwhelmingly preach and teach using Lutheran theology to make sense of daily life, but they also emphasize personal spiritual growth and personal religious practices, such as regular worship attendance, prayer, sharing their faith with others, Bible reading, and so on. Many of them are creating their own confirmation materials and purchasing programs and materials from non-Lutheran sources. Clergy describe themselves as more politically moderate and liberal than conservative.

As compared to when Christ and Culture was originally published, today’s dualists have a more hopeful view of culture: of the meaning of the incarnation for empowering activity dealing with the stuff of everyday life, of the possibility of God’s future renewing the present, and of the import of God’s work of creation in transforming social institutions.

The work of synods and the churchwide organization also shows signs of the dualist-conversionist hybrid. “Transformation,” “transformational,” and “transformative” describe a variety of synod and churchwide programs, experiences, and strategies. In the 1991 social statement The Church in Society: A Lutheran Perspective, traditional Lutheran paradoxes are referenced but culture is also strongly affirmed: “Although in bondage to sin and earth, the world is God’s good creation, ... The Church and the world have a common destiny in the reign of God.” “Transformed by faith, this church in its deliberation draws upon the God-given abilities of human beings to will, to reason, and to feel.” ⁷ The sense of culture in the recent resource, “Free in Christ to Serve the Neighbor: Lutherans Talk about Human Sexuality,” is quite positive: “Culture and its gifts are part of God’s good creation.” ⁸

Lutherans’ comfortableness with the messiness of life is a boon when talking about difficult social issues like human sexuality, but there are signs that life may be less messy for ELCA Lutherans than it used to be. Prof. Richard Perry of the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago says that most of his students initially put themselves in the conversionist position; he therefore asks them also to read Robert Benne’s The Paradoxical Vision for a clear, recent statement of dualist thinking.⁹

The survey compares what I have labeled dualist-conversionist respondents with what I will now tag as dualist-opposition respondents. The same questionnaire was fielded to an additional set of ELCA congregations (184 in number) that are members of the Willow Creek Association (WCA), sponsored by the megachurch Willow Creek Community Church outside of Chicago.

These ELCA congregations interpret the Bible historically and contextually but less from the perspective of the church’s theological teaching. They offer courses of study in Christian apologetics and often sponsor mission trips. Worship is less liturgical, materials are more often purchased from non-Lutheran publishers, clergy describe themselves as more politically conservative, and connections with the church beyond the congregation are fewer.

ELCA/WCA-member congregations, though at heart dualist, incorporate characteristics of Christ against culture (opposition type), as can be seen in their mixed feelings toward aspects of the ELCA (e.g. the adequacy of worship and educational resources; the theological and political perspective of the churchwide office) and mainline American Protestantism.

The survey hints at a third, minority dualist hybrid: the dualist-synthetic. Approximately forty percent of pastors give attention to social justice or social action themes, e.g. working to end poverty, “often” or “always” in their preaching and teaching. Niebuhr’s synthetic type takes seriously “God’s demands for present action,” ¹⁰ affirms just social institutions, accepts cooperation with non-believers, and values both reason and revelation.

Historical events, local context, and liberation theology have probably influenced the activism of these congregations and leaders. The 400 ELCA congregations engaged in congregation-based community organizing would likely locate themselves in this hybrid group.

Growth for the Hybrids?
In Acts of Faith, sociologists of religion Rodney Stark and Roger Finke argue that religious groups can be located along “an axis of tension” between themselves and their environment.¹¹ Greater tension with the environment makes membership more costly and valuable. Tension requires and invites greater commitment that translates into the contributing of resources (e.g. volunteers, money, etc.), confidence in the religion, and growth in numbers.

When David Roozen, director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, used the data from the Faith Communities Today (FACT) survey, a national, interfaith research project of 14,300 congregations completed in 2000, he discovered that numerical growth may be related to tension with the environment for Evangelicals but not for what he calls “oldline Protestants,” a group in which he places the ELCA.¹²

These Protestants grow in numbers not when they stand over against culture but when they address both what is missing and desired in post-modern society, for example, the ability to channel diversity and conflict, clarity of purpose in unsettled times, inspiration, spiritual practices, and choice.

Roozen’s analysis indicates that among “oldline Protestant” congregations that are growing, there is: (1) an absence of serious conflict; (2) clear purpose; (3) population change; (4) inspirational worship; and (5) options in terms of in-house programs. A second tier of influential factors includes: (6) contemporary worship; (7) spiritual practices; (8) a welcoming of change; and (9) membership size.¹³

The absence of conflict has the strongest relationship to growth. Demographic changes have an impact but less so than general harmony and clear purpose. Inspirational worship and contemporary worship are not the same but both have influence. The effect of size is less than usually thought, though it certainly affects the number of in-house programs.

The ELCA dualist-opposition hybrid lives in tension with church culture that lacks a shared mission, enthusiasm, and religious socialization. In this respect, it resembles the tension with culture that is a mark of growing Evangelical churches.

ELCA congregations that fit into the dualist-synthetic hybrid may be united by and find purpose around addressing social injustice, but numerical growth is often challenged by demographic changes and an inability to maintain a variety of in-house programs.

ELCA congregations that make up the dualist-conversionist hybrid category can strengthen their engagement with a post-modern culture by: learning the art of moral deliberation for divisive institutional and social issues, encouraging spiritual practices in public and personal life, investing imagination and enthusiasm in worship as well as offering contemporary worship, and engaging in planning and programming that risks change for the sake of mission. These practices represent a view which appreciates the role of culture yet recognizes that it falls short of what God intends. They are moves by “the church of the center.”