Journal: Reformation and Revival
Volume: RAR 03:3 (Summer 1994)
Article: Prelude to Revival: A Christian Response to Culture Wars
Author: Bryan Chapell

RAR 3:3 (Summer 1994) p. 35

Prelude to Revival: A Christian Response to Culture Wars

Bryan Chapell

What Will Make a Difference?

We are agreed. Newsweek magazine’s headline declares that America is at war over cultural values, and weeks later Christianity Today follows with its own cover article reporting the battle fully engaged. Factions may not agree with each other’s values, but all concur we are living through a cultural war. If you want some evidence of the culture’s rifts you have only to stand in a “Hands Across America” lifechain along a major traffic thoroughfare as my family and I did a few weeks ago. Waves and shouts of encouragement from pro-life drivers, other gestures and profanities from those of opposing views—even toward my children—make it clear how deeply we as a people are divided and how differing are our values.

Over a decade ago Francis Schaeffer warned of the impact eroding morals and retreating churches. With this early salvo he challenged Christian churches to wake up to their loss of spiritual influence upon society:

... [A]ll the most devastating things in every area of our culture, whether it be art or music, whether it be law or government, whether it’s the schools, permissiveness and all the rest, all these things have come climactically in our adult lifehood.... But the mentality of accommodation did not raise the voice, it did not raise the battle, it did not call God’s people to realize that this is a part of the task—to speak out into the culture and society against that which was being so undercut and lost and largely thrown away.

With this call to arms and many similar ones the war now rages on every front: arts, politics, law, business, medicine, education ... even at the level of reading curricula in the nation’s grammar schools. The battles touch every area of our lives involving the most basic issues of our being: family, gender, sexuality, race, ethics, personal responsibility, the sanctity of life itself.

RAR 3:3 (Summer 1994) p. 36

The scope of the issues that are being debated well indicate that we may have arrived at a defining moment—a watershed mark in history that will determine the shape and form of our world for many years to come. Such a realization has led to a consistent call among believers for reformation and revival in our society. Clergy and laity across denominational, socio-economic, and ethnic lines have united their voices to summon the spiritually concerned to make a difference at this crucial time. But what really will make a difference? Solutions do not lie in easy answers nor human wisdom. The magnitude of our situation presses us to search for answers in this Scripture where an apostle sought revival in a chur...