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In March of last year, the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto invited Ryan C. McIlhenny to deliver a lecture entitled Preserving the Common, Producing Difference: Neo-Calvinism and the Cultural Turn in the Humanities. McIlhenny, Associate Professor of History and Humanities at Providence Christian College, is the editor of the extremely helpful volume Kingdoms Apart: Engaging the Two Kingdoms Perspective. His lecture, like his work generally, is worthy of attention. More than offering a critique of Two Kingdoms Theology, McIhenny defends the idea of a distinctively Christian education, showing just what is at stake in the “Christ and culture” debates. Below is the lecture itself, preceded by the abstract.
“A crucial element often missing in the contemporary discussions about Christ and culture is a robust definition of culture. This address offers an updated definition that evaluates traditional evangelical understandings on the topic with contemporary cultural studies and critical theory. Culture, as I propose, is the purely phenomenal identity that springs from human interaction with the created order. Such a definition affirms the common and shared/undifferentiated activities of both Christians and non-Christians that, nonetheless, produce different cultures, preserving the neo-Calvinist emphasis on structure and direction.”
