Understanding culture

I recently finished some training for a volunteer program that I will be starting soon. One of the speakers spent time focusing on cultural compentency. It was an excellent presentation and it had my mind spinning. The entire time I could only think about how a lot of ultra-conservative, fundamental Christian churches and leaders definitely have their own distinct culture. To set the tone of how this blog may go from time to time, I would like to spend this first post discussing culture.

Culture, as defined by the presenter, is the learned shared patterns of values, beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, norms, traditions, and practices of a group of people. Culture shapes how people think, feel, act and perceive the world around them.

I immediately applied this definition to try to understand one particular Christian homeschool leader, Kevin Swanson. Now, believe me, I am not a follower of Swanson's ideas. In fact, when I homeschooled I never followed any of the views of the ultra-conservative homeschool folks. And, believe me, they are out there! One only has to go to a state Christian homeschool convention to find them. The folks that Kevin Swanson "minister" to are definitely a unique culture.

I could easily get off-topic, so back to culture. I want to cover five areas that culture leads to. I will provide examples of each area based upon a radio broadcast of Kevin Swanson's on his Generations with Vision show from March 6, 2014 titled "Missionaries and Birth Control.*" It is my hope that we can have a better understanding of other groups when we encounter their words or actions.

1. A given culture gives birth to a belief system.

A belief system is simply the basis of a set of beliefs. Swanson's belief system is based upon a Judeo-Christian background. Swanson's belief system is based upon the Bible and he will often say that his words and advice are "Biblical."

2. A belief system gives birth to a world view.

A world view is an overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world. Again, Swanson's belief system is based upon the Bible, therefore, anything in the world that does not align with the Bible is sinful. Just after the 15 minute mark, Swanson's co-host, Steve Vaughn, says this:

"Marriage is for illustration and procreation. That is what the Bible says about marriage. It illustrates Christ and his church and it propagates the human race. That is why we have marriage. So if you’re going to get married,the only way to not have children then is to actually deal with birth control."

I use this illustration because Swanson and Vaughn have a world view about marriage based upon the Bible. Because of their world view, they believe that the use of birth control is unbiblical because it prevents procreation.

3. A world view gives birth to values.

Values are a person's principles or standards of behavior or one's judgment of what is important in life. I am sure that Swanson values a lot in life, but I am going to focus on his value of faith for the time being. At the 16:30 minute mark, Swanson says the following:

"You can have 14 kids without faith. That’s bad. That’s really bad. You can take birth control without faith. That’s a sin too. You gotta have faith. It takes faith to have a child. That to me is really important, Steve. That’s fundamental. Now, as it turns out, God wants faith for everything that we do. The churches out there that have a birth rate of 2.5, or 4.5, or 6.8 may be doing pretty well. But when you walk into a church as I did in Denver a year or two ago and saw a bulletin board of all the families. And I saw 147 adults and 3 kids. And I said to myself, “Wow! Birth rate of .23. Not good."

SV: "Yeah"

KS: "But, my first impression is not, wow that birth rate is bad. My first impression is faithless church."

We don't know anything about this church except what Swanson has told us. There are so many questions to ask. What if this is an older congregation? What makes him think that the families in this church are purposely not having children? All that we know is that Swanson's world view says that people of child bearing years should be having children.

4. A value gives birth to specific attitudes.

Attitudes are a settled way of thinking or feeling about someone or something, typically one that is reflected in a person's behavior.

Do you spot Swanson's attitude up above? How about in these words that follow the above?

"Where is the faith? Now, this denomination has softened on homosexuality. Softened on feminism. Softened on women preachers, on women elders. It's soft on a lot of things. In other words, its faithlessness reveals itself in 10,000 ways. You don't have to be an ignoramus. You can be an ignoramus and pretty much understand that this church is lacking in faith. The faith is dying, DYing, DYING in this church and the birth rate is one indication of that."

Because the birth rate is low at that poor Denver church, they are faithless people. This attitude is exacerbated because according to Swanson, this church has softened on other areas - other areas that go against his belief system, world view and values. (By the way, I have found that when Swanson finds deep sin or fault in people, he tends to dramatize a bit. Thus, the church was not only dying, but by the tone of his voice they were deep in the grave.)

5. An attitude gives birth to behavior.

Behavior is the way in which one acts or conducts oneself, especially to others. Going back to birth control, Swanson says the following at the 18 minute mark:

"If you have faithless pastor, faithless leaders, faithless everything you’re going to wind up with faithless women because it takes faith to have children. 1 Timothy 2, this is God’s vision for womanhood: meek and quiet spirit, modest in dress (all the things that are really unpopular on your average college today).  And the very last thing Paul says is that she shall be saved in childbearing if she pursue faith and righteousness in that state. The life of faith for a lady, in general, normatively, is life of having children. Because it takes faith to have children. It takes faith to raise them. It takes faith to believe the promises for our children and not think they’re going to go over the edge and die! It takes faith to raise kids."

You can definitely feel the attitude here, but most importantly, Swanson's behavior is such that his tone is condescending if you don't have the same world view as him, you are faithless and Godless. I have heard this in several of the radio broadcasts that I have listened to.

Of course, there are so many other issues that I have with what Swanson said throughout his radio broadcast, however, my goal was to focus on the issue of culture. Understanding the culture from which Swanson comes from and perpetuates gives us a better understanding of the words that spew out of Swanson's mouth. 

Was that too harsh? Well, that's just my opinion based upon my own world view.

*I transcribed Swanson's March 6, 2014 radio broadcast starting at the 8:29 minute mark. Please note that I may have missed a word here or there. There were many instances where Swanson or Vaughn used words multiple times. I condensed those to reflect a more cohesive thought.