The church in the western world has responded to the shifts that make culture an enemy of the gospel in four different ways, but each has been unsuccessful.
- Some Christian groups have attempted to use political power to control the culture and bring it back into line, eg The Moral Majority. These movements failed and are no longer taken seriously.
- Some churches have tried to recover their influence by creating alternative culture-making institutions, but these tend to get overwhelmed the surrounding culture. Christian schools and colleges risk getting is a reputation for inferior education if they refuse to adopt the curriculum and teaching methods of their secular counterparts to obtain accreditation and funding. The Christian music and movie industries have adopted the techniques and style, and corporate business model of their secular counterparts in order to succeed, but they have been absorbed by wider culture and got lost as a separate market sector within their industry.
- More liberal Christians have loved the world so much that they totally embraced modern culture. They have become so absorbed into worldly culture that they have lost an independent voice.
- Some Christians have rejected culture and attempted to escape from it, but this has isolated themselves from the world, which makes them irrelevant to modern life.
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