Recently, my family and I had a tremendous vacation in Sarasota. Among the things I did, this one with my daughter Victoria, was to go downtown Sarasota, where I found in a fabulous bookstore, Parkers, on Main Street, a cloth copy of the gem by Jaroslav Pelikan: Christianity and Classical Culture: The Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in the Christian Encounter with Hellenism (Yale University Press, 1993), in which he powerfully dissects the way the Cappadocians created a Christian culture for their day. I had a paper copy: it was great to get a cloth copy. For this book is a gem—and not simply because I am into the Cappadocians. It is extremely instructive. Wherever Christians gather over the course of time, they create a culture. This is inevitable since we are culture-creating creatures. And if we are not alert and vigilant, we will adopt the regnant culture of our society. Either we Christians are about transforming culture or it will transform us.
Case in point: the substitution of Mothers Day and Fathers Day for Pentecost and Trinity Sunday à la my recent post.