I think you pose a profound, and timely question. John Maxwell often says that as leaders we "teach what we know, but reproduce what we are." In the gospels we read that a student will be like his teacher. So, when as leaders in church we fill our reading time with the latest business books, go to the latest motivational seminars on how to improve our "businesses," when even church conferences tell us to "brand" our message, identify "target markets," and manage our resources for maximum productivity . . . we shouldn't be surprised if the end result is an amalgam of the church and modern corporate, consumer culture.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to "do" church effectively. When, however, we adopt uncritically the langauge of corporate America and its marketing gurus, we cannot help but also import a raft of unwanted baggage. Along with that language comes a template for thinking. The language constructs a model and paradigm for action which may indeed seem wise and relevant, but which is in fact antithetical to the contrarian nature of the gospel.

Can we really be surprised when, having become CEOs instead of shepherds and turning our churches into public service marketing organizations instead of outposts and embassies of the Kingdom, our churches become entertainment centers, our people become consumers seeking to buy the best product at the lowest prices, and the whole enterprise becomes something very terrestrial and banal instead of mysteriously numinous and transcendent?

I think you are correct to say that our faith has morphed with materialism and consumerism. The difference is that while Abraham and the Japanese crypto-christians will stand before God and claim they did it for fear of losing their lives, what will the American church say on that Day? I believe we've switched from serving the creator God of the universe to serving the created god of mammon.

And I wonder what those original missionaries to Japan will say. Did they make true disciples? Or did they promote a dependency on themselves for spiritual truth instead of teaching the converted to have their own relationship with the Savior? Did the missionaries go with a heart to win converts and conquests for the church. Or did they go to make disciples and equip the saints?

I wonder what modern American missionaries could glean from this little history lesson?

Good post. Incredibly relevant to our modern (or post-modern, if you prefer) American culture.

Obviously, each generation infuses its culture and interests into the life and practice of the church. I think that we have had a very unique situation in North American Christianity in that this generational "infusion" was common until about the 1950's, and then it stopped. For some reason (perhaps it was a response to or rejection of the rebellion of the 1960's), the church in North America took on a 1950's model and remained "stuck in time," in most places, for some 50 years or so.

So, when a new generation began to re-infuse its culture into the church, it has been seen as a rapid, outlandish, "culture accomodating" movement. It is, I believe, natural for the local church to be a cultural expression of the people in which it is planted. Today is no different.

No, I do not feel that we have become "crypto-Christians" at all. To assume so would be to assume that the 21st century culture in America is, in and of itself, wrong. And that is simply not the case.

I took a seminary class in "Cross Cultural Communication" at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I found that most of the lessons learned applied directly to our efforts to reach across the cultural divide that exists in our chruches today. I'll never forget this quote from my prof: "When it come to other cultures, they are not wrong, and they are not stupid, they are just different." That's a good lesson for us to remember.
http://geoffbaggett.wordpress.com

The fear of exclusion is a huge, often hidden desire in most people. We want to be considered "normal" and acceptable since ridicule or persecution is more than most can bear. Those who follow the mandate of "come ye out and be ye separate" are usually called elitist at best, and cultish at worst. As a result many churches that started out responding enthusiastically to the Spirit have now over time watered down their practices to orderly, predictable (read: boring)and lifeless services. "...having a form of godliness, but denying its power" Paul says. He goes on to say: "Have nothing to do with them." Ouch! Thanks for the history lesson.

I think this post is filled with great observations. Thanks for the thought provoking words. I agree that seeking relevancy is not completely wise, but I also think that seeking relevancy is different than discerning the language of a culture and speaking that language. The Gospel is always relevant, never outdated and as someone once said. The Gospel is the power of God! How awesome to be entrusted with something that caries that label. But I also say that many people today refuse to change their language and end up giving a crypto essence to the gospel because they refuse to learn the language of the culture in which they live.

"the forms of our American culture" and "the practices of the nations"

I'm sure it happens from time to time and in varying degrees, but in order to know and to challenge any culturalization of the Church, we have to identify the "forms" and "practices" that have invaded.

Are you addressing any specific "forms" and "practices"?

You have hit the nail on the head. Evangleical, emergent, even many fundamentalists have come to worship a 'form of godliness' above the truth of God himself. I believe that more than ever we will stand before God 'without excuse' because each of us has His Word in our hands. We must be willing to incorporate it into our hearts or it is meaningliess.

Great post! We need desperately to remember our history! I think of Polycarp who was martyred for refusing to say the words, "Caesar is Lord". The authorities of the day were more than willing to accomodate his religious practice as long as he compromised in this one area. I often wonder what Polycarp would say to the thousands of Christian churches in our country that fly the American flag during worship? What does the American flag have to do with the Kingdom of God? Would not Karl Barth and the authors of the Barmen Declaration in Nazi Germany caution us against mixing in such national symbols? And this is just one example of how we have compromised the Gospel in our day and age.

Whatever happened to the community of God gathering around the Word, the Font, and the Table? Are these not the signs and practices that have sustained us for two thousand years? Why all of a sudden are these no longer sufficient? Do we really believe that people have somehow changed in the 21st century? It seems to me that people still live in desperate need of love, grace, authenticity, deliverance from sin, and true community. Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and the preaching of the Word communicate all these things and more to the deepest levels of the human heart into areas I don't believe ever change.

Having said all that, let me move to the other side of the fence and affirm those who want to preach the Gospel in a relevant way. It is the task of every generation to hand over(faithfully, according to the Word of God, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit) the faith that has been handed down to them to the next generation. Methods, styles, forms, all these things are up for grabs and we should...no...we MUST be constantly asking ourselves how we can communicate the Gospel more effectively.

Ultimately, in my opinion, faithful reinterpretation will gather the community around the Word and Sacrament, there where the Savior promised to meet us. By clinging to these "touchstones" of our faith, we can avoid the errors of the Kakure/Crypto-Christians.

Soli Deo Gloria!
Doug

Great post. Creating a veneer over truth only smothers it.

Great blog. Certainly some timely thoughts at the beginning of a new year.
Why do we Christians (not "Christ-followers") want so desperately to be accepted by the world? Jesus never had an image problem. He went where the world was, to sinners, and He did not apologize for it to anybody. And He did not water down His message to please His religious critics.That meant meeting the sinner in the market, on the mountain, or for lunch in his own home. Reaching out and loving sinners was why He came. He did not water down His message to please His religious critics and I don't remember the self-confessed sinners ever complaining about His message. On the other hand, He did not invite the world into His house of prayer, nor did He re-invent the Temple to make it more acceptable to the seekers. I wonder how comfortable He would be today among those who are selling Him along with the latte and self-help books in the lobby.
I guess it's understandable that people might camouflage their beliefs as a survival tactic, as the Japanese Christians did. Perhaps that's the same thing the indigenous people of North and South America did when the Spaniards baptized them into Catholicism and people of other cultures have done when faced with a choice of conversion or annhilation. The syncretism that followed, though, should certainly be a warning to those Christians today who are following that path, voluntarily, because they want to be accepted by the culture around them.
Jesus didn't bend to an increasingly ungodly religious culture. Instead, He carried out the plan that He had formulated before man even existed...becoming the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
Today, we risk becoming another Laodicea...lukewarm and irrelevant in the culture we tried to reach. Just Crypto-Christians. Just a mouthful of spit.

It is not a question of whether we have become Crypto-Christians, the question is: in what way have we always been Crypto-Christians, and what does it look like now.

American Christianity has always been crypto. There has never been ideal Christianity anywhere. It's not like Christianity in America has gotten worse in the last four decades, it has just changed from one imperfect form to another.

Christians get in a huff over the erosion over their faith as if it had hit a peak somewhere in the past. Christianity was tainted in the book of Acts, and it is still tainted today. When was Christianity at its best in America? I'd hope that most of us would argue that the best is yet to come. We've always been crypto, sometimes worse, sometimes better, but it seems too naive to assert that it's been a downhill slide since the Puritans, or the Great Revivals, or the 1950's.

Of course Christians in America and the world over want to become less crypto, but it's seems silly to judge one form of American Christianity as more crypto then another (Mat 7). If somone is in denial about their crypto-Christianity, then apply Gal 6 to the situation. In the meantime, rather then acting shocked at another case of crypto-American Christianity, say a prayer concerning your own crypto-faith. Then get back to work, loving God and loving people through the power of the good news the gets imperfectly lived out. And keep thanking God that he keeps using even you.

Asking whether Brueggemann was right to say “The contemporary American church is so largely enculturated to the American ethos of consumerism that is has little power to believe or to act.” is an interesting question to ask on a web-site that is a host for flashing advertisements....

Skye Jethani writes "Ironically, it is often our zeal to protect our faith that leads to its loss". I am not sure what we're protecting is our faith.

I think it is our comfort and security. Christianity became a lifestyle enhancement or a faith upgrade feature for the Kakure. They chose to save their lives, and frost them with a little Christianity.

True confession: My own first impulse is to try to save my life. Can't I just combine Jesus with my current comfy existence a la the Kakure? Can't I? Huh? Pretty please?

We all know what the right answer is to this rhetorical question. But every time we attempt to preserve our own lives - and lifestyle - we silence the voice of our Savior, the one who asked his followers to leave everything and follow Him.

Perhaps the Europeans should have showed them how to become better Japanese Christians. I have a feeling much of the alienation they suffered was because they were told they ought to give up their Japanese culture and take up "beef and beer" as Gandhi always said. Our cultures are important- it is where we come from. I love the discussion of hiding behind our cultures, but maybe they weren't embracing their identities, they were giving them up because that was what they thought Christians do.

The words of Jesus came to mind as I read your article - "whoever wants to save his life will lose it" - the desire to live is a powerful force in each of us. I wonder what I would do under similar circumstances?

I think the key point was this part of the post, and none of the comments seem to reference it.

"Ultimately the prophets denounced the people for becoming indistinguishable from their neighbors—not caring for aliens, orphans and widows, failing to act justly, cheating their countrymen, amassing gold and silver, exploiting the poor, and all the while hypocritically honoring God with their festivals and songs."

If our church "culture" is current or a holdover from the 50's, we can still be crypto-Christians if we're not doing the above.

Re: Susan's post

I don't find the same sense of irony that you do. The basic natures and purposes of the church and a magazine (online & deadtree) devoted to Christian topics but run on a for-profit basis are similar in some respects, but not truly parallel.

I expect that a magazine has to sell ad space to defray costs and keep subscription costs down. The fact that it does so in no way undermines its publishing mission.

Now, if my church started selling ad space on the church walls and on the backs of chairs and such . . . that would be a different thing entirely, no?

It seems we're resiting two undesirable extremes: becoming so concerned with communicating with and relating to our culture that we lose our theological and/or ecclesiological moorings, or becoming so protective of our orthodoxy and orthopraxy that we lose the ability to speak to our culture.

In both cases, we're living fearfully, which is not the way of love. (Yes, I'm a big Henri Nouwen fan.) I think some of these questions melt away when we remove the attention on ourselves and look outwardly. If our concern is for those who do not experience the grace of God, our desire will be both for orthodoxy and for relevance, because one without the other is pointless.

God's love is like this: he came into the middle of our world, experienced all the suffering and shame of it, spoke to us in a Word we could understand. But the actions and words of Jesus are radical and life-changing.

The Kakure, it seems, didn't have the desire to reach others with the love of God they cherished in their private spaces. Let us not make the same mistake.

Very interesting discussion.

The difficulty is balancing how we engage culture while not becoming the culture. To be in the world but not of the world. Being separatist from the culture is definitely antithetical from the Great Commission. Jesus, for instance, was a friend of sinners, drunkards, gluttons and tax gatherers. He didn't hide from them, but he did not become them either.

It's a great challenge.

A fellow student in one of Clair Davis's church history classes at Center for Urban Theological Studies in Philadelphia spoke words that have stuck with me for years - "Whatever the culture is, true Christianity is always countercultural."

I can't help wondering how Daniel and his fellow Hebrews in Babylon would fit into a picture like this. I suppose that the "crypto-Jews" were those who were prepared to bow before the statue, rationalising their actions in the following way: "we may SEEM to be bowing before an idol, but our hearts are loyal to the one true God. If we don't protect our faith in this way, our faith will be stamped out by these tyrants. We have to keep it safe, in our hearts, until the circumstances are more congenial".

In fact it is impossible for a Christian believer's faith to to remain intact when they hide it in a closet. What usually happens is that when the more congenial moment arrives there is no longer any faith left to proclaim. It is impossible to imagine a believer's faith which is not defiant and fearless in the face of the cultural forces that are mobilised to suffocate it.

Daniel and his three fellow-believers who defied the commands of successive kings, were, nonetheless, profoundly "culturalised" in the sense that they, presumably as a leadership strategy, immersed themselves, to the point of towering head and shoulders above the contemporary Babylonian cultural elite, in the science, art and literature of the empire. Their God-given mission was actually not to withdraw for protection within their religious enclave, but to "work for the good of Babylon". This was what earned them the respect of the very kings whose commands they were prepared to defy.

Presumably these Jews missed their temple worship and so many ceremonies and rituals that were the warp and woof of their identity. But ultimately they did not depend on these things for the preservation of their identity. They worshipped God in their own homes - with the windows open! They were not hiding anything.

It is not difficult to envisage a time in the West when the public worship that we take for granted might be outlawed. Anti-Christian intolerance and prejudice is growing, and have found their way onto the statute books, precisely in countries where Christianity has played such a central role, and where historic churches pepper the landscape. This is likely to get bigger. Maybe that would (will) not be a bad thing. A lot of our worship services have in any case become little more than "I'm happy, you're happy, we're all happy love-ins" where the name of Jesus Christ is used more as a mantra than anything else, and where the Word of God - the bitter/sweet word that Jeremiah was given to "eat" - is rarely heard. In the meantime we will continue searching for ways of "being relevant", until we have become so "relevant" that we are barely distinguishable from the world that we have been appointed to preach to. Relevant as never before, but with nothing to say once we have made the connections with our culture.

Only a contemporary American church that is largely enculturated to the American ethos of consumerism can have any power to believe or to act as representatives of the counterculture of God’s kingdom. Contextualized evangelists, like their Master, will always be criticized for compromising the gospel. Aloof critics mistakenly think they can understand culture and the gospel from a safe distance. The contemporary church has learned to conceal and reveal the gospel “out in the open”. Only the enculturated church experiences a good mix of celebrations and crucifixions for her coterminous countercultural beliefs and actions.

Interesting questions and discussion. Here are some other questions I have:
1. Would Naaman have been considered a Kakure, as he went home and continued to kneel before the god of his king?
2.Did the Jesuits create the problem because they were using their dogma to enslave yet another culture to their control?
3. Were the Kakure given access to Bibles translated into their own language?
4. If contextualization is synonymous with acquiescence, does translation of the scriptures into languages other than the original Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek)constitute giving in to the culture? If so, how do we deal with Paul and Steven quoting and referencing the Septuagint? How do we explain John the Revelator quoting apochryphal books and pagan myths? And, how do we justify giving foreign nationals a Bible translated into their own tongue? Also, how does someone justify choosing a KJV Bible as the only correct translation (the Muslims, too, insist that only a Koran read in the classical Arabic is valid and that only heretics read translations)?
5. Paul established a concept for reaching enculturated people when he used the "unknown god" as a point of interest from which to begin. How does this method relate to reaching today's culture? Was Paul a sell out or was he using contemporary things of his day to reach the lost and then trusting the Holy Spirit to guide the individuals who came to Christ?
Thank you for sharing the topic, it gets the mental juices flowing and opens up additional levels of discussion.

Karl Marx is often quoted by Christians as having said that religion is the opiate of the people. He was wrong. It is materialism that is the opiate of the people, even Christians. One has only to look at the bourgeois Christianity of today's evangelicalism in America to see that the real opiate of the masses is materialism. Christianity in America is often little more than just another product to be marketed. Market forces, not a biblical faith, are its guiding principles.

No longer does the Church say, "Silver and gold have I none..." but then, rarely does the Church say, "Get up, take up your mat, and walk."

An excellent book dealing with this issue is by Os Guiness "Let God Be God - Dealing with the Idols of Our Age". Any and every generation and culture of faith is led by the world system, principalities and powers to create idols - substitutes for God's design. We struggle to see them for what they are because these idols stroke our convenience or greed or self-interest or ego's. We must be in perpetual reformation mode- like the Bereans re-re-examining what we are being told to see if it is true.

Two things: it seems that in our country, major issues come up around the differences between religion and culture. We call ourselves a "Christian nation" but I am less inclined to think that it is a religious distinction and more of a cultural one. Once we confuse the two terms, then we also confuse our faith with our culture. The Greek form of the word "church" means "called out." Who are we if we are only cultural?

Secondly, I personally love the idea of reclaiming ancient tradition and ritual, only breathing new life into it. I am in my late 20s and in conversations with not only people in my generation but others as well I have discovered that I am not alone. People are constantly intrigued by tradtional meaning of practices we already find in our Protestant churches. Not only that, but more and more people seem to be wanting to reclaim the oldest hymns and traditions of the church of the past. Something about the continuity with the past itself is appealing. Connection not only to people within a congregation, but to people across the centuries. What can I say, those advertisements that say "time-tested" are not only helping the product sell, but it is enforcing an already germinant idea that the past is important.

Can relevance be redefined as a way to bring tradition into our present life... to breathe that new life and spirit into dead and dormant rituals? I would surely sign up for that!!

Brilliant article, thanks for the challenge. Interesting stuff with the Kakure. Couple of thoughts.

Firstly, as an Australian Christian, I think that any discussion regarding the state of the American church needs to be done with an external reference point e.g. the Western church as a whole or the thriving church in Africa/Asia/South America. Looking at one thing and comparing it with itself, (even if over a period of time) is not a useful measure. This is what some of the comments appear to do in response to Bruegemann's quote.

Secondly, culture is always humanistic. All culture, whether Australian, North American, or African, there are elements that are intrinsically flawed, and fallen that require redemption. By comparison, true kingdom culture is counter cultural as Don noted. The macro picture is a reflection of the micro. If enough individual believers are living lives that reflect the Lordship of Christ, then the culture of a town, city, state or nation will be affected by that. When we see a reversal taking place (the western dilemma) it is indicative of the need to return to a grass roots level. This becomes cyclic in nature (ala Israel) as the people of God move away from God, only to eventually return to Him. My prayer and hopefully the prayer of every Christian is that the western nations will return.

Lastly, Gordon Moyes, an Australian pastor, notes that God is no longer "white". Two-thirds of the global church is now non-western which means that we need to think of the church differently. Perhaps part of our unease is not just the state of the nation around us but also the fact that God is moving in a different nation more than He is in ours. That God is blessing that person/church/place more than me/mine. What a challenge!

So instead of American cryptos should we become Greek cryptos? At what point in history do we decide that culturalizing wasn't appropriate? Isn't the bulk of our theology cultural versions from the Middle ages or the Renaissance or the Industrial age?

In recovering "ancient traditions" I assume you don't mean Jewish practices, because that's the only "Biblical" culture. Maybe if we continue on for a 1000 more years, our American ways will become Tradition too and it will be just as appropriate as Luther's culture, or Calvin's culture, or Aquinas's culture.

Indeed, it seems that culturalizing to a certain degree, becoming all things to all people, is precisely the model of the earliest communities which allowed for significant variation in form and questions depending on the specific culture.

Otherwise, it's just picking and choosing which "culture" we think had it right, and making everyone else act like it. Which was partially the problem in Japan. Western missionaries wanted Western Christians, and provoked a cultural crisis.

I think the comment by the Crypto-Christian who said that, "We, and nobody else, are true Christians" has some truth to it. We all have a cultural component in our churches. We have to try hard not to let the culture of the community get in the way of the purpose of church. It makes me realize that we need to keep the main thing the main thing. I find it interesting that many Christians do not feel comfortable talking about their faith. However, they have no trouble talking about the local high school football team. The church is the house of God. It's the place we go to worship God.

"For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise" (2 Corinthians 10:12 KJV).