What Makes Up Culture?

The Philadelphia Messianic Jewish congregation situation has prompted many discussions in our church, some of which seem to me to center around what we define as a 'culture.'

The Presbyterian Outlook, for example, asks in a recent article, "To what extent, for example, can Jews or Muslims be considered an 'ethnic group' or a culture, rather than people of another religion?"

Well, then, let's look a bit at what defines 'culture.'

Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, by David Hackett Fischer, distinguishes various cultures from one another by how they differ in their distinctive folkways.

The book's thesis is that in any given culture, 'folkways' always include the following things:

• Speech ways: conventional patterns of written and spoken language - pronounciation, vocabulary, syntax and grammar.


• Building ways: prevailing forms of vernacular architecture and high architecture, which tend to be related to one another.


• Family ways: the structure and function of the household and family, both in ideal and actuality.


• Marriage ways: ideas of the marriage-bond, and cultural processes of courtship, marriage and divorce.


• Gender ways: customs that regulate social relations between men and women.


• Sex ways: conventional sexual attitudes and acts, and the treatment of sexual deviance.


• Child-rearing ways: ideas of child nature and customs of child nurture.


• Naming ways: onomastic customs including favored forenames and the descent of names within the family.


• Age ways: attitudes toward age, expreiences of aging, an age relationships.


• Death ways: attitudes toward death, mortality rituals, mortuary customs and mourning practices.


• Religious ways: patterns of religious worship, theology, ecclesiology and church architecture.


• Magic ways: normative beliefs and practices concerning the supernatural.


• Learning ways: attitudes toward literacy and learning, and conventional patterns of education.


• Food ways: patterns of diet, nutrition, cooking, eating, feasting and fasting.


• Dress ways: customs of dress, demeanor, and personal adornment.


• Sport ways: attitudes toward recreation and leisure; folk games and forms of organized sport.


• Work ways: work ethics and work experiences; attitudes toward work and the nature of work.


• Time ways: attitudes toward the use of time, customary methods of time keeping, and the conventional rhythms of life.


• Wealth ways: attitudes toward wealth and patterns of its distribution.


• Rank ways: the rules by which rank is assigned, the roles which rank entails, and relations between different ranks.


• Social ways: conventional patterns of migration, settlement, association and affiliation.


• Order ways: ideas of order, ordering institutions, forms of disorder, and treatment of the disorderly.
  


• Power ways: attitudes toward authority and power; patterns of political participation.


• Freedom ways: prevailing ideas of liberty and restraint, and libertarian customs and institutions.

Says the book, "Every major culture in the modern world has its own distinctive customs in these many areas..."

A missionary mindset is not one that seeks to do away with other cultures but one that does the hard work -- the art, really -- of coming to grips with and relating to a distinct other culture. Unless we understand a culture and the various "folkways" values that are upheld in that culture, we won't be able to get to square one in presenting and passing along the gospel to them.

-- Dave Hackett