Spring Seminar 2024

“Christian Discipleship in a ‘Post-Christian’ Society and Culture” is a seminar in cultural apologetics that focuses on the current state of American culture and how Christians can live faithfully and responsibly in the midst of a society that is becoming increasingly hostile toward Christian beliefs and values.

Ours is a society and culture that celebrates narcissism, hedonism and materialism. In the process, virtually every area of American life is becoming secularized, socialized, sexualized and racialized under the influence of sinister forces that are waging aggressive and unrelenting attacks on morality in general and the Christian faith in particular. As our spiritual, moral and ethical foundations collapse, so goes our religious and cultural institutions, our economy, our political system, and any remaining standards of civility.

As Bob Dylan sang in the 1960s, “The Times They Are A-changin’,” but no one back then could possibly foresee the tectonic shift that has radically altered American society and culture in the past fifty years, or just how far our nation has strayed from its religious and cultural heritage during that time. We live in a society that increasingly calls evil good and good evil (Isaiah 5:20), and as philosopher J. Budziszewski has written, this is a strange and unprecedented time.

We are passing through an eerie phase of history in which the [moral truths] that everyone really knows are treated as unheard-of doctrines, a time in which the elements of common decency are themselves attacked as indecent. Nothing quite like this has ever happened before. Although our civilization has passed through quite a few troughs of immorality, never before has vice held the high moral ground. Our time considers it dirty-minded to great sexual purity as a virtue… [and] a sign of impious pride to profess humble faith in God. The moral law has become the very emblem of immorality…. [J. Budziszewski, What We Can’t Not Know, p. 10]

“Christian Discipleship in a ‘Post-Christian’ Society and Culture is an interactive study centered around directed readings and focused discussions on four important books: Jefrey D. Breshears, C. S. Lewis on Politics, Government, and the Good Society, Jefrey D. Breshears, The Life & Legacy of Francis Schaeffer, Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option, and Eric Metaxas, Letter to the American Church.

Join us as we focus on what it means to understand and practice wholistic Christian discipleship in the midst of our current cultural disintegration. Never in American Christian history have the internal forces aligned against us been more formidable, and never before have American Christians needed to be better informed and engaged in the battle for all that is True, Good and Beautiful for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

• Christianity and Culture – An Introduction (Outline)
• C. S. Lewis on Politics and Government (Outline)

Jefrey D. Breshears, C. S. Lewis on Politics, Government, and the Good Society
Jefrey D. Breshears, The Life & Legacy of Francis Schaeffer
Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option
Eric Metaxas, Letter to the American Church

Dates and Time:
Wednesdays
January 17 – April 10, 2024
6:30 – 8:00 PM

Registration:
$60 or $100 per couple
No charge for students

Location:
Johnson Ferry Baptist Church, Room 320/340
(This course is also offered online via Zoom).