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Religion How Religion Affects Culture
Theologian Henry Van Til famously said that culture is religion externalized. He meant that a culture is the outworking of a people group’s fundamental beliefs, their religion and worldview. People do not behave randomly. They act according to what they desire and what they consider right and wrong. It is their religion and worldview that causes them to act the way they choose. Cultures, then, are not ethically neutral. Taking the culture as a whole, there are areas where the people usually externally adhere to God’s law, and other areas where the common practice is to violate it. Many writers say that religion is only one aspect of a culture, but that is incorrect. Every person has a religion. God created men as religious beings. We can either worship the true God or worship some aspect of creation.1 That worship can manifest itself as worship of a god of our own invention, material wealth, demons, or even a man, or mankind. Every person has a religion, and it is that religion which defines how he will act. Henry Van Til wrote in his book, The Calvinistic Concept of Culture: Since religion is rooted in the heart, it is therefore totalitarian in nature. It does not so much consummate culture as give culture its foundation, and serves as the presupposition of every culture. Even when faith and its religious roots are openly denied, it is nevertheless tacitly operative as in atheistic Communism. A truly secular culture has never been found, and it is doubtful whether American Materialism can be called secular. Even Communism, like Nazism, has its gods and devils, its sin and salvation, its priests and its liturgies, its paradise of the stateless society of the future. For religious faith always transcends culture and is the integrating principle and power of man’s cultural striving. Kroner stresses the subjective side of religion when he says, ‘Since faith is the ultimate and all-embracing power in the human soul, nothing