Scott Clark writes:
When the faith has been practised in a group for a very long time, in roughly the same way, it’s natural to assume that is the way it must be practised. When the lines between church and family (as one expression of culture in the broader sense, which is the sense in which I am most interested here) become blurred, it may become difficult even to know that there ever was a distinction between the culture in which we learned the confession and the confession itself.
There is a difference. The New Testament church experienced this acutely when Gentiles began to be admitted to the churches. What had been hitherto a Jewish movement was now a culturally mixed movement. The Gentiles didn’t share Jewish assumptions about language, food, clothing. Many Jewish Christians assumed that their culture was the faith, that there was no other way to practice the faith than the way it had been received and practised by them. The conflict became so intense that a council was called (Acts 15) to sort it out. [KEEP READING]