Month: July 2019
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Changing Religion
How does religion, or religious culture, change? What are the forces involved? Are they seldom, occasionally, often, or always associated with violence, chaos, disruption? Or are they easily subjected to control and management? All cultures and religions have elements predisposed to change and elements predisposed and even designed to maintaining the status quo. More often…
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The Culture of God
How do culture and religion influence one another? Nothing shapes us more than where we were raised, where we were socialized. What we wear, what language we speak, what we eat, what sports we follow, what relationship we have with our family, how we picture God, which holy books we read, and how we practice…
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Culture and Religion: What Would Jesus Do?
How did Jesus relate to the culture of His time and place, and what influence might it have had on Christian doctrine? Does God Himself have a culture? The practice of religion is based on the accident of birth, on where one is born, what language one speaks, how one is educated, and which holy…
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The Effect of Culture on Doctrine and Scripture
What is culture? Does God have culture? The word is from the Latin cultura meaning cultivation, the tilling of the soil. Perhaps it is the essence of what is needed for survival. The poet T.S. Eliot wrote: “Culture may even be described simply as that which makes life worth living.” (T. S. Eliot, 1948. Pp….