What is Cultural Christianity?

 

My view of this phenomenon

 

As I see it, there is a certain form of Christianity that has existed for ages but has never claimed its own niche in the Christian world. It takes shape naturally within the thoughts and behaviors of many people who, at different times and for different reasons, chose not to attend church services. The Christian philosophy of life is not part of their ideas because of church teachings, but because of the influence of their environment and culture. This phenomenon is called ‘cultural Christianity’.

Humanity has become more mature

The diversity of Christian beliefs shows that their common foundation, the Gospel, can be understood in different ways. Each of the Christian confessions gives its own answer to the question: how should you live as a Christian? I do not want to judge the extent to which the answers differ from each other, but one thing is clear: they all imply a certain confession of faith.

And this is also the stumbling block: in modern secular societies there are more non-believers than believers, and even among believers there is a growing number of sceptics and Christians practicing in their own ways, independent of any church.

Social disasters have increasingly put religious faith to the test. For example, the influence of the fascist ideology on the psyche of his compatriots, the inability of the churches to prevent mutual hatred between people, and the resulting war led the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) to the insight that traditional evangelism is no longer relevant. Humanity has become more mature, he thought, and what people need now are not the doctrines and rites of the church, but support in practically shaping their lives, without constantly falling back on canonical dogmas. The world has become secular and Christianity will find its place in it when it also becomes secular. He believed the modern world needs such a form of Christianity.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a resistance fighter against Nazism. He was put to death before the end of the war, leaving behind only reflections on the need for a non-religious transformation of Christianity. In the Western, post-war world his thoughts resonated with many people, but the concept of a non-religious form of Christianity as a legitimate variant, on an equal footing with the canonical denominations, never developed. Something else happened. Dissatisfaction with the effectiveness of sermons and rituals caused an almost mass secularization of the post-war youth in the 1950s and 1960s. The Eastern spiritual traditions, which hold out the prospect of an independently followable spiritual path and a personal creed, were more attractive to them than Christianity, and this has remained the case to this day. But there are also more and more people who no longer regard the content of the Gospel as a religious dogmatic doctrine but as a spiritual philosophy of life. They call themselves cultural Christians.

Universal philosophy of life

Anyone who has really read through Jesus’ statements will have discovered how much is said about the meaning of human existence and the need to change your attitude towards what is happening around you. However, hardly anything is said about church services, rituals and sacraments. In addition, Jesus not only addressed his own people, as the prophets of the Bible did, but he spoke to everyone ‘who has ears’ and could hear him. His philosophy of life was universal. It asked people above all for an inner change and it promised thereby to change the world, since the world always changes together with people. Jesus also spoke about how people could follow his views on their own, without the intervention of temple services and priests. Is this not the foundation of a secular spiritual tradition – in this case a non-religious Christianity?

It is known that before the 1st century people in early Christian communities were also independently following Jesus’ spiritual teachings as a philosophy of life. The rituals that emerged in early Christianity did not yet have an absolute and unambiguous meaning at this stage, which they did acquire with the unification of the Christian faith. Ultimately, however, Christianity became a religion that required admission to the church community, attendance at church services and receiving the sacraments. The consideration of Christianity as an independent spiritual path was not encouraged.

This raises the following question – which Leo Tolstoy also asked in his time: why should we not be able to separate the philosophy of life that emerges from the Gospel from the traditional religious creed? Many of Jesus’ statements concern questions such as: How do I make my life meaningful? What is the way? What choices must I make? What must I change in myself? He spoke about this most often with his disciples, the apostles, and also with occasional conversation partners. And nowhere did he condemn independently following the path of life that he preached.

In other words: the founder of Christianity, who was called Jesus of Nazareth during his lifetime, did not preach a new religious creed, but a new philosophy of life with a spiritual path that can be followed on one’s own. For his contemporaries, he was therefore primarily a teacher of life. The religious doctrine about the essence of his person only developed at a later stage and thus displaced the earlier ideas about Jesus and his teachings.

In the past, the need to return to the source has been expressed many times, and as a result, new religious movements have emerged time and again, developing their own dogmas. But today, under the influence of the spirit of the times, this need also raises the question of a spiritual, non-religious philosophy of life. This contrast has even given rise to a form of self-identification that is literally called: spiritual but not religious. This contrast also influences the mentality of modern Christians.

In conclusion

Cultural Christianity has already claimed its right to exist. There is no reason to think that it will replace the existing Christian movements. Nor does it lend itself to the formation of powerful macrostructures or authoritarian sects, since it does not start from new religious dogmas, but from a general Christian spiritual paradigm as presented in the Gospel. This characteristic has produced various expressions of cultural Christianity and will continue to do so. And, in my opinion, if cultural Christianity has found its place within modern views on existential meaning, society will benefit from it.

A philosophy of life that encourages a conscious rejection of mutual hostility is a desirable counterbalance to conflicts, aggression and wars. And the more people follow this philosophy, the stronger the counterbalance becomes.