What Is Christian Culture?

Noah Hahn and Rev. Paul Schulz have co-written an excellent article in Christian Culture. Here is portion.

A household requires an authority structure governed by virtue. Aristotle’s example of a household virtue is courage. A husband, who is by nature the authority, exemplifies courage in commanding; a wife, having a different nature, exemplifies the same virtue in obeying. Children, who have yet another nature, obey their father in a different way. When natural authority is respected by all, virtue can be passed down to the next generation; a boy raised in a virtuous home by a courageous father will one day do the same for his own household.

Even the highest household authority, however, is not absolute. No human father is perfectly wise, and no son has a perfect memory or perfect obedience. For this reason, authority also involves respect for a tradition that predates and survives any one particular authority. As G. K. Chesterton spoke of a “democracy of the dead,” we might say that a household or a community that neglects tradition is committing cultural election fraud. This does not mean tradition has absolute authority, but it does mean it has default authority. The authority of tradition does not dictate that we never change, but it does place the burden of proof on the one who wants to change. Tradition does not bar us from asking questions, but it does reveal that such questions are best asked in conversation with a certain body of respectable texts, stories, art, and music. Understood in this way, tradition is not about stuffing old ideas into the cramped theater of your mind. Rather, tradition is about allowing your mind to stretch—sometimes painfully—to fill cathedrals built long ago.

I recommend the entire piece: "What Is Christian Culture?"