Religion and Culture

Over a century later, the name, “Society for the Advancement of Christian Education” (SACE) was given new life by former missionary, Christian educator, scholar, and strategist, Craig Engelhardt, SACE’s founding director. He describes its origins:

“The genesis of SACE was a love for God and five months of service with Youth With A Mission in India. There, in 1990, I gained a new perspective on people, society, and faith — one that not only linked cultures to religious beliefs that shaped the citizenry, but also viewed cultures as “testimonies” of the nature, power, and priorities of the gods behind the cultures. This was a new idea for an American who had assimilated the secular perspectives that religion had little relevance to society and society had little relevance to God. A healthy society merely required a “good” (secular) education system and abundant natural resources.

With new perspective, I came to find that the qualities of a nation (good and bad) were frequently linked with particular beliefs about reality. I believed that the poverty and disease I encountered in India were not merely reflections of their education system or the supply of natural resources, but they were the outworking of particular ideologies — ultimately, religious ideologies.

“This association of religion with culture, though new to me, was not new to some of the Indians I talked with. Gods are not always visible, but they are made visible through the individuals and cultures of those committed to them. I will never forget a market-place comment that cut deeply into my heart; as I turned away from buying an otoscope because of its poor quality, the seller, who had traveled in America said, “Yes, I don’t blame you. Our stuff is junk. You are a Christian nation and make superior products, but we are a Hindu nation, and we have what is really valuable. We have families that stay together.” My heart was grieved not merely because of America’s divorce rate, but because this divorce rate was associated with our “Christian nation.” This caused me to wonder about the influence of our movie industry, American business practices, our government’s international relations policies, etc. Did these draw people to want to know the God they associated with American Christianity? American Christians may seek to distance God from our culture, but being the majority faith (nearly 82% of the U.S. population is Christian), the association is difficulty to avoid.

“I realized that whereas most Evangelical Christians consider their personal lives and speech to testify of God, few seemed to grasp the ways in which the myriad facets of culture can testify of God. If God is the source of beauty, value, justice, truth, commitment, compassion, fun, freedom, invention, wholeness, relationships, and provision, why don’t Christians point to the cultural out-workings of these things as testimonies of God?

“I returned to America to seek to understand the often subtle roles and foundations “beliefs” play in shaping not only the lives of individuals, but the cultural testimonies of nations. In this quest, I visited a spiritually and philosophically strong Christian school (Christian Heritage School) and studied under its headmaster. Here, I not only gained a better understanding of the link between religion and culture, but I found that the school day is vital to the Christian nurture of children. Children must be taught how to associate their faith with life and culture. It requires intellectual and academic rigor to discern how Biblical principles engage the arts, government, economics, family life, etc. I became convinced that without a good Christian education, it is difficult for Christian children to develop the understanding, character, or commitments to shape the diverse aspects of their culture to reflect the wisdom, compassion, creativity, and beauty of God.