Cultural Christians

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Cultural Christians are those who received Christian values or appreciate Christian culture. They may be non-practicing Christians, non-theists, apatheists, transtheists, deists, pantheists, or atheists. These individuals may identify as culturally Christian because of family background, personal experiences, or the social and cultural environment in which they grew up. [1]

Contents

Contrasting terms are "practicing Christian", [2] "biblical Christian", [3] "committed Christian", [4] or "believing Christian". [5]

The term "cultural Christian" may be specified further by Christian denomination, e.g. "cultural Catholic", "cultural Lutheran", and "cultural Anglican". [6] [7] [8]

Usage

Belarus

The President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has identified as cultural Christian, calling himself an "Orthodox atheist" in one of his interviews. [9]

France

French Deists of the 18th and early 19th centuries include Napoleon. The current President of France, Emmanuel Macron, identified himself as an "Agnostic Catholic". [10] [11]

China

Traditionally, Christianity has been considered a "foreign religion" (Chinese :洋教; pinyin :yáng jiào, means non-local religions) in China, including all the negative connotations of foreignness common in China. This attitude only started to change at the end of the 20th century. In China, the term "Cultural Christians" (Chinese :文化基督徒; pinyin :wénhuà jīdūtú) can refer to Chinese intellectuals devoted to the study of Christian theology, ethics, and literature, and often contribute to a movement known as Sino-Christian theology. Some of the earliest figures in this movement in the late-1980s and 1990s, such as Liu Xiaofeng and He Guanghu, were sympathetic to Christianity but chose not to associate with any local church. [12] Since the 1990s, a newer generation of these Cultural Christians have been more willing to associate with local churches, and have often drawn on Calvinist theology. [13] [14]

Italy

The liberal writer Benedetto Croce, in his book Perché non possiamo non dirci cristiani ('Why we can't not call ourselves Christians'), expressed the view that Roman Catholic traditions and values formed the basic culture of all Italians, believers and non-believers, and described Christianity primarily as a cultural revolution.

United Kingdom

Outspoken English atheist Richard Dawkins has described himself in several interviews as a "cultural Christian" and a "cultural Anglican". [15] [16] [17] In his book The God Delusion , he calls Jesus Christ praiseworthy for his ethics. [18] Similarly, former prime minister Liz Truss described herself as saying "I share the values of the Christian faith and the Church of England, but I'm not a regular practising religious person." [19]

United States

Thomas Jefferson, a Founding Father of the United States, considered himself part of Christian culture, despite his doubts about the divinity of Jesus. [20] [21] [22] [23] [24]

Demographics

Western Europe

European countries have a Christian cultural background, which was significant in inheriting European civilization, [25] and Europe also came, in some contexts, to be seen as synonymous with "Christendom" (though properly speaking the term refers to the Christian world in its entirety). [26] [27] Today, many people in Western Europe remain "culturally Christian". According to a 2018 study by the Pew Research Center; Christianity is still the largest religion in Western Europe, where 71% of Western Europeans identified themselves as Christian. [28] According to Pew Research Center "most Christians in Western Europe today are non-practicing, but Christian identity still remains a meaningful religious, social and cultural marker", [29] where 55% of Western Europeans identified themselves as non-practicing Christians, and 18% identified themselves as church-attending Christians. [30]

The Netherlands

Forms of Christianity have dominated religious life in what is now the Netherlands for more than 1,200 years, [31] and by the middle of the sixteenth century the country was strongly Protestant (Calvinist). [32] The population of the Netherlands was predominantly Christian until the late 20th century, divided into a number of denominations. [33]

The provinces North Brabant and Limburg in the Netherlands are historically mostly Roman Catholic, therefore many of their people still use the term and some traditions as a base for their cultural identity rather than as a religious identity. Since the War of Independence the Catholics were systematically and officially discriminated against by the Protestant government until the second half of the 20th century, which had a major influence on the economic and cultural development of the southern part of the Netherlands. [34]

From the Reformation to the 20th century, Dutch Catholics were largely confined to certain southern areas in the Netherlands, and they still tend to form a majority or large minority of the population in the southern provinces of the Netherlands, North Brabant and Limburg.

However, with modern population shifts and increasing secularization, these areas tend to have fewer and fewer religious Catholics. Since 1960 the emphasis on many Catholic concepts including hell, the devil, sinning and Catholic traditions like confession, kneeling, the teaching of catechism and having the host placed on the tongue by the priest rapidly disappeared, and these concepts are nowadays seldom or not at all found in modern Dutch Catholicism. The southern area still has original Catholic traditions including Carnival, pilgrimages, rituals like lighting candles for special occasions and field chapels and crucifixes in the landscape, giving the southern part of the Netherlands a distinctive Catholic atmosphere, with which the population identifies in contrast to the rest of the Netherlands. The vast majority of the (self-identifying) Catholic population in the Netherlands is now largely irreligious in practice. Research among Catholics in the Netherlands in 2007 shows that even among religious Dutch Catholics only 27% can be regarded as theist, 55% as ietsist, 17% as agnostic and 1% as atheist. [35]

See also

Related Research Articles

Agnosticism is the view or belief that the existence of God, the divine, or the supernatural is either unknowable in principle or unknown in fact. It can also mean an apathy towards such religious belief and refer to personal limitations rather than a worldview. Another definition is the view that "human reason is incapable of providing sufficient rational grounds to justify either the belief that God exists or the belief that God does not exist."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Religion</span> Social-cultural system

Religion is a range of social-cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relate humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements—although there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion. Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from the divine, sacredness, faith, and a supernatural being or beings.

Irreligion is the absence or rejection of religious beliefs or practices. It encompasses a wide range of viewpoints drawn from various philosophical and intellectual perspectives, including atheism, agnosticism, skepticism, rationalism, secularism, and spiritual but not religious. These perspectives can vary, with individuals who identify as irreligious holding diverse beliefs about religion and its role in their lives.

Jewish atheism is the atheism of people who are ethnically and culturally Jewish.

The Western religions are the religions that originated within Western culture, which are thus historically, culturally, and theologically distinct from Eastern, African and Iranian religions. The term Abrahamic religions is often used instead of using the East and West terminology, as these originated in the Middle East.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of religion in the Netherlands</span>

The history of religion in the Netherlands has been characterized by considerable diversity of religious thought and practice. From 1600 until the second half of the 20th century, the north and west had embraced the Protestant Reformation and were Calvinist. The southeast was predominately Catholic. Associated with immigration from Arab world of the 20th century, Muslims and other minority religions were concentrated in ethnic neighborhoods in the cities.

Cultural Muslims, also known as nominal Muslims, non-practicing Muslims or non-observing Muslims, are people who identify as Muslims but are not religious and do not practice the faith. They may be a non-observing, secular or irreligious individuals who still identify with Islam due to family backgrounds, personal experiences, ethnic and national heritage, or the social and cultural environment in which they grew up.

Criticism of atheism is criticism of the concepts, validity, or impact of atheism, including associated political and social implications. Criticisms include positions based on the history of science, philosophical and logical criticisms, findings in both the natural and social sciences, theistic apologetic arguments, arguments pertaining to ethics and morality, the effects of atheism on the individual, or the assumptions that underpin atheism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Religion in Europe</span>

Religion has been a major influence on the societies, cultures, traditions, philosophies, artistic expressions and laws within present-day Europe. The largest religion in Europe is Christianity. However, irreligion and practical secularisation are also prominent in some countries. In Southeastern Europe, three countries have Muslim majorities, with Christianity being the second-largest religion in those countries. Ancient European religions included veneration for deities such as Zeus. Modern revival movements of these religions include Heathenism, Rodnovery, Romuva, Druidry, Wicca, and others. Smaller religions include Indian religions, Judaism, and some East Asian religions, which are found in their largest groups in Britain, France, and Kalmykia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Religion in the Netherlands</span>

Religion in the Netherlands was dominated by Christianity between the 10th and 20th centuries. In the late 19th century, roughly 60% of the population was Calvinist and 35% was Catholic. Also, until the Holocaust, there was a noticeable Jewish minority. Since world war II, there has been a significant decline in Catholic and especially Protestant Christianity, with Protestantism declining to such a degree that Catholicism became the foremost form of the Christian religion. The majority of the Dutch population is secular. Relatively sizable Muslim and Hindu minorities also exist.

Some movements or sects within traditionally monotheistic or polytheistic religions recognize that it is possible to practice religious faith, spirituality and adherence to tenets without a belief in deities. People with what would be considered religious or spiritual belief in a supernatural controlling power are defined by some as adherents to a religion; the argument that atheism is a religion has been described as a contradiction in terms.

Accurate demographics of atheism are difficult to obtain since conceptions of atheism vary considerably across different cultures and languages, ranging from an active concept to being unimportant or not developed. Also in some countries and regions atheism carries a strong stigma, making it harder to count atheists in these countries. In global studies, the number of people without a religion is usually higher than the number of people without a belief in a deity and the number of people who agree with statements on lacking a belief in a deity is usually higher than the number of people who self-identify as "atheists".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christianity in Europe</span>

Christianity is the predominant religion in Europe. Christianity has been practiced in Europe since the first century, and a number of the Pauline Epistles were addressed to Christians living in Greece, as well as other parts of the Roman Empire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Religion in Sweden</span>

Religion in Sweden has, over the years, become increasingly diverse. Christianity was the religion of virtually all of the Swedish population from the 12th to the early 20th century, but it has rapidly declined throughout the late 20th and early 21st century.

Christian atheism is an ideology that embraces the teachings, narratives, symbols, practices, or communities associated with Christianity without accepting the literal existence of God. It often overlaps with nontheism and post-theism.

Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which is the belief that at least one deity exists.

In the United States, between 4% and 15% of citizens demonstrated nonreligious attitudes and naturalistic worldviews, namely atheists or agnostics. The number of self-identified atheists and agnostics was around 4% each, while many persons formally affiliated with a religion are likewise non-believing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christians</span> People who adhere to Christianity

A Christian is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the world. The words Christ and Christian derive from the Koine Greek title Christós, a translation of the Biblical Hebrew term mashiach (מָשִׁיחַ). While there are diverse interpretations of Christianity which sometimes conflict, they are united in believing that Jesus has a unique significance. The term Christian used as an adjective is descriptive of anything associated with Christianity or Christian churches, or in a proverbial sense "all that is noble, and good, and Christ-like."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Decline of Christianity in the Western world</span> Decline Christian affiliation within Western society

A decline of Christian affiliation in the Western world has been observed in the decades since the end of World War II. While most countries in the Western world were historically almost exclusively Christian, the post-World War II era has seen developed countries with modern, secular educational facilities shifting towards post-Christian, secular, globalized, multicultural and multifaith societies.

References

  1. ↑ James D. Mallory, Stanley C. Baldwin, The kink and I: a psychiatrist's guide to untwisted living, 1973, p. 64
  2. ↑ Rabbe, Jake (6 June 2018). "Voices: What in the world is a non-practicing Christian?".
  3. ↑ Patrick Morley, The Man in the Mirror: Solving the 24 Problems Men Face (1997), Biblical Christian or Cultural Christian?
  4. ↑ Richard W. Rousseau, Christianity and Judaism: the deepening dialogue (1983), p. 112
  5. ↑ Postmodern theology: Christian faith in a pluralist world, Harper & Row, 1989 . Joseph C. Aldrich, Life-style evangelism: crossing traditional boundaries to reach the unbelieving world , 1983
  6. ↑ Rautio, Pekka (15 August 2017). "Lutheranism has provided the foundations of the Nordic welfare state". University of Helsinki . Retrieved 27 July 2020.
  7. ↑ Rachel Zoll, What would 'cultural Catholic' Sotomayor mean for Supreme Court?, Associated Press, 6/3/2009
  8. ↑ Stoyan Zaimov (4 March 2013). "Richard Dawkins: I Guess I'm a Cultural Christian". The Christian Post. Retrieved 5 March 2013.
  9. ↑ "Belarus president visits Vatican". BBC News. 27 April 2009. Retrieved 26 June 2010.
  10. ↑ "France's new president is a 'zombie Catholic'". Catholic News Agency.
  11. ↑ "Meeting with Pope puts Macron's religious views in spotlight". The Local. 25 June 2018.
  12. ↑ Fällman, Fredrik (2008). "Hermeneutical conflict? Reading the Bible in Contemporary China". In Starr, Chloë F. (ed.). Reading Christian Scriptures in China. New York: T & T Clark. pp. 49–60. ISBN   978-0567638465.
  13. ↑ Fällman, Fredrik (2013). "Calvin, Culture and Christ? Developments of Faith Among Chinese Intellectuals". In Lim, Francis Khek Gee (ed.). Christianity in Contemporary China: Socio-cultural Perspectives. London: Routledge. pp. 153–168. ISBN   978-0415528467.
  14. ↑ Chow, Alexander (2014). "Calvinist Public Theology in Urban China Today" (PDF). International Journal of Public Theology. 8 (2): 158–175. doi:10.1163/15697320-12341340. hdl: 20.500.11820/9dc682b5-4fe2-4022-932a-89d466dd71c1 . S2CID   143357822.
  15. ↑ "Dawkins: I'm a cultural Christian". BBC News. 10 December 2007. Retrieved 1 March 2008.
  16. ↑ "Q&A with Richard Dawkins: 'I guess I'm a cultural Christian'". Charleston City Paper. 4 March 2013. Archived from the original on 7 March 2013. Retrieved 4 March 2013.
  17. ↑ "Richard Dawkins: I Guess I'm a Cultural Christian". The Christian Post. 4 March 2013. Retrieved 5 March 2013.
  18. ↑ The God Delusion, page 284
  19. ↑ Hatton, Ben; Wheeler, Richard (2 August 2022). "Nicola Sturgeon is an 'attention seeker' best ignored, claims Liz Truss". PA Media. Archived from the original on 5 August 2022.
  20. ↑ Jayne, Allen (2000), Jefferson's Declaration of Independence: Origins, Philosophy and Theology traces TJ's sources and emphasizes his incorporation of Deist theology into the Declaration.
  21. ↑ Franklin, Benjamin (1958) [1771]. Autobiography and other writings. Cambridge: Riverside. p. 52.
  22. ↑ Olson, Roger (19 October 2009). The Mosaic of Christian Belief: Twenty Centuries of Unity and Diversity. InterVarsity Press. ISBN   9780830826957. Other Deists and natural religionists who considered themselves Christians in some sense of the word included Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.
  23. ↑ Boller, Paul F (1996), Not so!: popular myths about America from Columbus to Clinton, p. 31
  24. ↑ Boller, Paul F (1963), George Washington & religion, Southern Methodist University Press, p. 16, ISBN   9780870740213 , retrieved 5 March 2011, ...the father of his country... died as he had lived, in dignity and peace; but he left behind him not one word to warrant the belief that he was other than a sincere deist
  25. ↑ Xu, Lianhua (2018). Understanding Western Culture: Philosophy, Religion, Literature and Organizational Culture. Springer Singapore. p. 183. ISBN   9789811081507.
  26. ↑ Jordan-Bychko, Terry G. (2020). The European Culture Area: A Systematic Geography. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 7. ISBN   9781538127605.
  27. ↑ Dawson, Christopher; Olsen, Glenn (1961). Crisis in Western Education (reprint ed.). CUA Press. p. 108. ISBN   978-0-8132-1683-6.
  28. ↑ "Being Christian in Western Europe" (PDF). Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project. 29 May 2018. Retrieved 21 January 2021.
  29. ↑ Sahgal, Neha (29 May 2018). "10 key findings about religion in Western Europe". Pew Research Center.
  30. ↑ "Being Christian in Western Europe" (PDF). Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project. 29 May 2018. Retrieved 21 January 2021.
  31. ↑ Milis, L.J.R., "A Long Beginning: The Low Countries Through the Tenth Century" in J.C.H. Blom & E. Lamberts History of the Low Countries, pp. 6–18, Berghahn Books, 1999. ISBN   978-1-84545-272-8
  32. ↑ Israel, Jonathan (1995). The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477–1806. Clarendon Press. pp. 361–395. ISBN   978-0-19-820734-4.
  33. ↑ Numbers, Ronald L. (2014). Creationism in Europe. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN   9781421415628.
  34. ↑ Israel, Jonathan (1995). The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall, 1477–1806. Oxford History of Early Modern Europe. ISBN   0-19-873072-1.
  35. ↑ God in Nederland' (1996–2006), page 42, by Ronald Meester, G. Dekker, ISBN   9789025957407
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