“God is dead.” Friedrich Nietzsche first made this famous
pronouncement in The Gay Science. Of course, Nietzsche did not mean that
God had actually died or even that God had never existed; he meant that
the idea of God was outmoded. Nietzsche’s madman followed his verdict
with the proud declaration, “We have killed him—you and I.”
Was Nietzsche correct? Have we truly killed God? Since the time of
Darwin, many Christians have lived in fear for the fate of their religion,
jealously guarding their institutions and traditions against assaults
from intellectuals and philosophers. Yet God has proved to be quite
resilient. More than a century after Nietzsche died, God still lives.
Worldwide, the Christian church flourishes. Despite all its grandstanding,
postmodern philosophy has not dealt the coup de grace to religion.
But where does Christianity in America stand today? Perhaps American
Christians have been guarding the wrong gate. They were expecting a
ravenous wolf, but they got a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The critical
observer may note that in many ways, Christianity has been co-opted
by the culture in which it dwells. The true danger to the Christian
faith was not to be found in the arguments of Bertrand Russell but in
the insidious complacency of American culture.
Perhaps God’s funeral, rather than being attended by grand columns
of mourners as Thomas Hardy imagined, took place in a pauper’s
cemetery where He lies in an unmarked grave. Or perhaps God is more
like Douglas MacArthur’s old general: He doesn’t die; He
just fades away. He retreats into the shadows, His departure unnoticed.
Our contemporary culture does not care if God is dead, nor does it see
why it should matter anyway. The popular version of the Christian God
is as proverbially American as baseball and apple pie. He is Aslan without
the fangs.
Has our culture become one in which Christianity—with its truth
claims—is replaced by emotivism and relativism? Christians are
called to question cultural trends and to challenge the assumptions
of this world (Rom. 12:2). Being a Christian means being a critic of
culture, but how should we fulfill our duties as critics? Do we remove
ourselves from culture and criticize it? Or do we engage in the culture
and seek to change it from within?
In this issue of Revisions, you will read various accounts of how Christians
interact with and within their culture. The writers wrestle with important
topics regarding gender, sexuality, consumerism, and entertainment to
understand how Christ’s transcendent story affects our lives and
our culture. In the end we hope the Christian readership will reexamine
its own opinions and views to expose a spiritual complacency and mediocrity
too common among American Christians. We also hope the secular readership
will wrestle with religion’s influence on culture and how Christians
contribute to the ongoing dialogue about the future of American culture.