Cultural Engagement
Reading cultures so the gospel engages without syncretism — evangelical identity rooted in missiology, not in culture-war posture.
How should evangelicals win the culture war without compromising?
Simply rooting evangelicalism in the Reformation negates the fact that evangelicals share the same 2,000 year history with the rest of global Christianity.
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Overview
Faithful presence in plural, post-Christian, and religiously diverse contexts — reading cultures (ancient and modern) so the gospel engages without syncretism, recovering evangelical identity rooted in missiology rather than culture-war posture.
Cultural fragmentation, pluralization, and globalization have raised evangelical identity in fresh ways. Western evangelicalism has tended to define itself by the Protestant Reformation. Alister McGrath's six convictions — Scripture, the majesty of Christ, the lordship of the Spirit, conversion, evangelism, community — still describe a heritage. They also describe a five-hundred-year-old answer to a European Catholic question. Simply rooting evangelicalism in the Reformation negates the fact that evangelicals share the same two-thousand-year history with the rest of global Christianity.
Kwame Bediako looked instead to second-century apologists: Tertullian and Tatian for discontinuity with culture, Justin and Clement for continuity. Thomas Oden pressed paleo-orthodoxy — what has been believed everywhere, always, by all. Cooper's constructive move is missiological: evangelical identity should be rooted in missiology, not in culture-war posture or in a Reformation package exported as if it were the gospel. Europe searches for identity in pre-Christian religions; Africa in traditional religions; the United States in political parties and social causes. A Reformation-only identity has had, in Bediako's terms, a Judaizing effect. It has not allowed indigenous expressions to emerge from the soils where Christianity has been planted.
The ancient record already models the alternative. Missiological parallelism — Jesus as better logos, better physician, better ruler — engages culture without syncretism and without withdrawal. Early Christians reused temples, guild halls, and homes; they did not pretend architecture was neutral, and they did not baptize pagan ontology. Engage, discern, witness. Read the culture the way Paul read Athens and Ephesus and the way Cooper reads inscriptions and graffiti. Then declare Christ as superior without dismissing the image-bearers who already philosophize, worship, and seek healing.
The planter who takes this theme seriously will refuse two failures at once: the culture-war evangelical who confuses political capture with faithfulness, and the syncretist who confuses hospitality with the loss of gospel distinctiveness. Faithful witness is older than both.
The usual question:
How should evangelicals win the culture war without compromising?
The better question:
How does missiological engagement read a culture so the gospel neither syncretizes with it nor withdraws from it?
The Model
Engage
Discern
Witness
The Biblical Mandate
Acts 17:22–23
So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: "Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: 'To the unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you."
This is missiological engagement in public: observation of cultic forms, an inscription read as evidence, and a proclamation that neither baptizes Athenian ontology nor withdraws from the city. Cooper's missiological parallelism works the same way in Asia Minor — Jesus as better logos, not a redemptive analogy that leaves the idol unnamed.
1 Corinthians 9:19–23
Romans 1:19–20
Supporting Texts
Evangelical identity is usually narrated from 1517. Alister McGrath's six convictions — Scripture, Christ's majesty, the Spirit's lordship, conversion, evangelism, community — describe a Reformation heritage answering a European Catholic question. That heritage is five hundred years old. Evangelicals share two thousand years with the rest of global Christianity. Rooting identity only in the Reformation, Cooper argues, has a Judaizing effect: it exports a Western package and does not let indigenous expressions emerge from the soils where the gospel is planted.
Kwame Bediako looked to second-century apologists instead. Tertullian and Tatian pressed discontinuity with Greco-Roman culture; Justin and Clement pressed continuity. The empire called Christians a third race; the church had to decide whether Jerusalem had anything to do with Athens. Thomas Oden, Cooper's doctoral teacher, pressed paleo-orthodoxy: what has been believed everywhere, always, by all, via Vincent of Lérins and the first seven councils. Meanwhile the 2020s have intensified an identity crisis Cooper names in politics, plague, race, and religion — Trumpgelicalism and evangelical deconstruction as American symptoms of a longer Western captivity.
Asia Minor already modeled another path. Missiological parallelism — Jesus as better logos, physician, pantokrator — engaged plural cults without syncretism and without withdrawal. Pre-Constantinian Christianity required allegiance more than membership. That history, not a culture-war script, is the warrant for Engage–Discern–Witness.
Historical Context
Evangelical identity is usually narrated from 1517. Alister McGrath's six convictions — Scripture, Christ's majesty, the Spirit's lordship, conversion, evangelism, community — describe a Reformation heritage answering a European Catholic question. That heritage is five hundred years old. Evangelicals share two thousand years with the rest of global Christianity. Rooting identity only in the Reformation, Cooper argues, has a Judaizing effect: it exports a Western package and does not let indigenous expressions emerge from the soils where the gospel is planted.
Kwame Bediako looked to second-century apologists instead. Tertullian and Tatian pressed discontinuity with Greco-Roman culture; Justin and Clement pressed continuity. The empire called Christians a third race; the church had to decide whether Jerusalem had anything to do with Athens. Thomas Oden, Cooper's doctoral teacher, pressed paleo-orthodoxy: what has been believed everywhere, always, by all, via Vincent of Lérins and the first seven councils. Meanwhile the 2020s have intensified an identity crisis Cooper names in politics, plague, race, and religion — Trumpgelicalism and evangelical deconstruction as American symptoms of a longer Western captivity.
Asia Minor already modeled another path. Missiological parallelism — Jesus as better logos, physician, pantokrator — engaged plural cults without syncretism and without withdrawal. Pre-Constantinian Christianity required allegiance more than membership. That history, not a culture-war script, is the warrant for Engage–Discern–Witness.
Stories from practice
Tertullian, Tatian, Justin, Clement
2nd century, Greco-Roman world — Tertullian, Tatian, Justin, Clement
Tertullian asked what Jerusalem had to do with Athens. Tatian treated Greek philosophy as error. Justin saw continuity with Heraclitus and Socrates via the logos. Clement treated philosophy as fulfilled in Christ. Bediako uses the four as a map of discontinuity and continuity. Cooper's missiological parallelism belongs with Justin's instinct without Clement's unguarded incorporation: Jesus is better logos, not a baptized pagan ontology. The empire's 'third race' insult is the social setting of Engage–Discern–Witness.
Pathway connection: Discernment is the middle term. Engagement without discernment syncretizes; discernment without engagement withdraws.
Reformation identity and the culture-war reflex
United States / global evangelicalism, 1995–2020s — Reformation identity and the culture-war reflex
McGrath (1995) tied evangelical future to Reformation heritage and six convictions. Cooper argues that this five-hundred-year story cannot carry global evangelicals, and that American identity has drifted into political parties and social causes — Trumpgelicalism as a named symptom. A Reformation-only package, like European Christianity in Bediako's Africa, Judaizes: it replaces indigenous self-understanding with an imported one. Faithful witness is older than both the culture war and the withdrawal into private faith.
Pathway connection: Evangelical identity rooted in missiology, not in culture-war posture.
Practices
Engage: observe cultic and civic forms
Discern: parallelism versus syncretism
Witness: declare without capture
Audit evangelical identity
Reflection
- Where have I confused political capture with faithfulness?
- Where have I withdrawn and called it holiness?
- What local form have I never bothered to read?
- Is our story Reformation-only, and whom does that exclude?
- Name one missiological parallelism we could speak this month.
- Where is our hospitality becoming syncretism?
Resources for the journey
book(link)
When Evangelicals Sneeze
Evangelical identity rooted in missiology rather than culture-war posture.
book(link)
Gods, Emperors, Philosophers, and a New Movement
Ancient cultural engagement: parallelism in a plural religious landscape.
book(link)
A Faithful Witness
Supporting: third-century witness under political and social turmoil.
Questions people ask
Distortions
Culture-war evangelicalism
Syncretism as hospitality
Withdrawal as holiness
Pathway vocabulary
- Cultural engagement
- Faithful presence in plural contexts: reading cultures so the gospel engages without syncretism or withdrawal.
- Contextualization
- Guarded adaptation of form. Cooper fences it from syncretism and from unguarded redemptive analogy.
- Evangelical identity
- Who evangelicals are. Cooper roots it in missiology and two thousand years of church, not in 1517 alone or in a party.
- Religious pluralism
- The setting of Asia Minor and of modern cities: many cults, many healers, many lords. Parallelism speaks here.
- Faithful witness
- Declaring Christ as superior while remaining among image-bearers — Engage–Discern–Witness.
About Michael Cooper
Michael T. Cooper is an American evangelical missiologist and missiological theologian best known for coining and building out **"Ephesiology"** — the study of the first-century church-planting movement centered in Ephesus — as a framework for understanding and catalyzing contemp