The cultural opportunities of 2017

Each week, The World and Everything in It features a “Culture Friday” segment, in which Executive Producer Nick Eicher discusses the latest cultural news with John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Here is a summary of this week’s conversation.

As Christians look ahead to 2017, John Stonestreet warns against believing in the political illusion—the idea that politics can solve the culture’s problems.

After the election of Donald Trump and in anticipation of his appointment of a Supreme Court justice, many Christians hope for a reprieve from some of the Obama administration’s policies that impinged on religious liberty.

“Now the question is going to be what place can Christians establish in society? What roles can we play?” Stonestreet said. The challenges the culture faced before and during the election still exist, especially in the areas of persecution, life, marriage, and religious liberty. Christians must confront those challenges in a society that increasingly believes the church is irrelevant.

“We’re in big trouble as long as … 50 percent of Americans think the government could pick up all the services provided by religious organizations and nothing could be lost,” Stonestreet said, citing surveys reported in the recent book Good Faith by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons.

He called on Christians to become irreplaceable in civil society by working in hospitals, schools, pregnancy care centers.

“The most important thing we can do is use this time of reprieve to get involved in local communities,” Stonestreet said. “We need Christians inspired, equipped, and sent to these mission fields.”

Listen to “Culture Friday” on the Dec. 30 edition of The World and Everything in It.