Our nation seems more divided than ever on moral and spiritual issues. The different tribes watch comfortable cable channels, subscribe to congenial blogs, or lob incendiary posts at other tribes on social media. Each group is trying to control the script—evangelicals included.

There are fewer places where the tribes even live side by side. A New Yorker might read What’s the Matter with Kansas? while flying over the actual state at 30,000 feet. Here in northern California, it easier for an evangelical to see a video of a scientist on YouTube than to talk with one face-to-face.

But Chico and the ridge have all the tribes. We are not isolated from people who think differently. They’re next door. So, at Chico Grace Brethren, we decided to start a dialogue.

Over the summer we said to friends and neighbors, “If you could ask a pastor to speak on any question, what would it be?” We found that the conversations lowered barriers. We also thought the questions we received were terrific. I choose six of them to address in a short series that starts this Sunday.

The series is called, “Tough Questions,” and the title fits.

Some of the questions are confrontational. “Why would I want organized religion?” Or, “How can Jesus be the only way?” Others come from profound pain. “Why does God allow evil against children?” Two questions are simple requests for information: “What happened when Jesus was young?” “Where is heaven?”

This is a way we can throw away the script and have a real exchange of ideas. I also take written questions about the sermon and answer them during the service. We’ve found that this kind of dialogue keeps the atmosphere respectful and the temperature low. We won’t necessarily be able to agree, but we will find some new ways to talk about timeless issues. We hope you will join us, either at 10:15 a.m. on Sundays, or on the web at chicogracebrethren.com.

by Matthew Raley I'll be speaking about my book, The Diversity Culture, tomorrow, September 11th in Cottonwood. The conference takes place from 9 AM to 1 PM at 1st Baptist Church, 3320 Brush Street. You can reach the church for more information at (530) 347-3691. Here is a map to the church.

I am very grateful to Pastor John Roland for organizing this conference. I look forward to seeing you there!

by Matthew Raley Here's the audio archive of the interview I did this afternoon on "KKMS Live with Jeff and Lee." Thanks for the opportunity, guys!

by Matthew Raley Last week, I was interviewed about my new book The Diversity Culture by Tracy Haney for Prime Time America on Moody Radio. The interview was broadcast on July 9th during Part 2 of the program and is archived on the web. Many thanks to Tracy for all his work and interest!

I can do four presentations about my book that are suitable for many groups and settings. My biographical info and picture are on the About Matt page, and you can click here if you're interested in having me speak to your group. A Fresh Look at the Samaritan Woman

Meet the woman at the well as she really was. Peel away layers of misconceptions, generalizations, and assumptions about her. Discover why a woman hardened by abuse and competing religious agendas engaged with a Jewish rabbi named Jesus (John 4:1-42). A sermon or a workshop presentation in one session (45 min).

From St. Helena to Sychar

Tour Main Street in a place taken over by a new regime. See the impact of the diversity culture as it changes the town’s demographics, spiritual priorities, and moral compass. The changes in St. Helena, California are similar to those in Sychar (John 4:1-42), where Jesus met the Samaritan woman. Be refreshed by encountering the Savior who is bigger than any cultural regime. A single-session workshop presentation or a sermon (45 min). Works best with interaction.

Four Ways Jesus Spoke to Hostility

Discover the practical ways Jesus met the Samaritan woman’s antagonism (John 4:1-26). With each step, you’ll go beyond pat answers and cross the barriers people put up against the gospel every day. You’ll also see how Jesus’ methods will deepen your own spiritual life. A single-session workshop presentation or a sermon (45 min). Works best with interaction.

Can the Bible Speak to People Appropriately?

Some believers think the Bible can’t minister to people today unless we fix it, force it to behave. Others think Christians are duty-bound to be culturally offensive, lest they compromise the Bible. Is it possible that we don’t know the Bible well enough? Discover how Jesus used Scripture to open up a healing dialogue with a hostile listener. A sermon with detailed exposition and theological material, also suitable as a lecture (55 min).

I can also do a retreat or conference:

The Diversity Culture: Creating Conversations of Faith

Session 1: Barriers

A hard look at the cultural divide between evangelicals and the diversity culture, covering media narratives, identity formation, postmodern attitudes, and negative experiences.

Session 2: Truths

A theology from the Gospel of John for healing our relationships in the diversity culture. This theology is grounded in the doctrines of the Bible, the community of believers, and the resurrection of Christ as applied by John.

Session 3: Strategies

A close examination of how Jesus interacted so successfully with the Samaritan woman (John 4).

A series of retreat or conference presentations (1 hour each) that survey the content of the book. Though challenging, the sessions include many stories from personal experience, as well as media references that will engage listeners. The presentations can be tailored to any church audience, but would be especially helpful for training leaders.

by Matthew Raley My email command center refreshes the inevitable advertisements whenever I so much as breathe. So I find myself confronted with faces smoothed from wrinkles and thighs cured of cellulite -- all by the miracle of photoshop. When the screen isn't filled with skin, there are rows of teeth.

I understand the intent. I'm supposed to be repelled by the yellow teeth, and attracted to the white ones. And, lo, I am repelled by mouths full of yellow, though the sight of lips drawn back and gums glistening with you-know-what isn't exactly delightful.

But I have to admit that I'm not attracted to the white teeth either. For starters, they're just another photoshop fantasy. Also, when drawn-back lips reveal yellow, the implication is one of age, disease, perhaps odor. When the lips and gums show stark white, it's like my computer screen is growling at me. I don't know whether to laugh or run.

Furthermore, it's just a fact: some chemical compound stripped this person's teeth. And if the toxin is capable of that, what's it going to do to the liver?

Ultimately, what bothers me about the pictures of white teeth is that I'm looking at the newest pose of self-absorption. Face against mirror, lips stretched, looking up, looking down, evaluating the yellow. Do this pose once and you'll never be able to stop, because we're always wondering, "Am I hideous?"

Yesterday I finished unChristian: What A New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity ... and Why It Matters.

This is a serious book, a salutary contribution to the debate about evangelical problems. It is filled with careful analysis, rigorous comparisons of data, and balanced conclusions. The book is honest, the statistics illuminating, and the interviews well-selected, yielding an account of outsiders' perceptions that rings true.

David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons give, on the whole, sensible guidelines to change these perceptions. I do not find a compromise of the gospel in this book, or a wavering on moral standards. The most commonly repeated admonition is to listen to outsiders before correcting them. You should read unChristian and be instructed.

I only have one concern about this book. The frame it adopts is mistaken. On the back cover, scattered through the pages, and stated in the first sentence is the way the authors want us to interpret their data: "Christianity has an image problem."

Like members of any subculture, evangelicals are sensitive about how they look to outsiders. They feel like they cannot belong to the mainstream, like they can never be understood, like the ways of their group are an embarrassment. They scheme to prove the outsiders wrong, to show who they "really are," which involves getting the rest of the subculture to look right.

The seeker-sensitive movement was a particularly ruthless example. We were told that our churches were comprehensively embarrassing. We were told to look and sound different. If you didn't go along, then you didn't care about The Lost.

Kinnaman and Lyons are not peddling that old message. They go deeper into the issues, and their prescriptions for evangelicals are often aimed restoring simple godliness.

But I think they made a mistake in catering to the evangelical obsession with image. We've been gum-to-mirror evaluating the yellow for years. We've rinsed our teeth with chemicals over and over, asking each time, "Do we twinkle now?" Our smile has only become more frightening.

The long, hard look unChristian offers at what we are doing and saying is needed. But the most powerful impression I get from it is that evangelicals are self-absorbed. The root of their problem is their vanity. The spiritual change we need will not come from image-sensitivity, which can only motivate changes of systems, mission, and presentation.

We have to be new.

Such transformations require us to pull our faces off the mirror and gaze upon the image of the invisible God.

by Matthew Raley To my frustration, the default mode of pastors when teaching the New Testament is, "We have to cross a huge gap of time and culture to understand the 1st century."

The Bible is indeed a foreign book, and studying it does require effort. Its foreign nature derives from a national Jewish narrative stretching back to Abraham, which imposes Hebrew patterns of thought on us even in translation. So, fine: there's a gap.

But to imagine that the cultural environment in which Christ walked, at the end of that narrative, is on the far side of a chasm, that the New Testament world is culturally alien to our own, is to misunderstand both then and now. It is to remain in a Victorian point of view.

Consider this characterization of Roman religious life from Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Volume I, Philadelphia: Henry T. Coates & Co., n.d., p 74):

The superstition of the people was not embittered by any mixture of theological rancor; not was it confined by the chains of any speculative system. The devout polytheist, though fondly attached to his national rites, admitted with implicit faith the different religions of the earth.

Pick apart those ideas, and you find a description of spirituality today. Spirituality is story not doctrine. I shun speculative systems as so many "chains" that bind people in "rancor." There are many gods, and the ones I follow may not belong to you. But there is a reality to them all.

Or this (p 75): "Such was the mild spirit of antiquity, that the nations were less attentive to the difference, than to the resemblance, of their religious worship." There was, Gibbon says, a tolerance of all traditions. That is certainly the ethic today.

To be sure, Gibbon was grinding an ax with regard to Christianity, and his care to present the Roman world as civilized and ironic -- rather like himself -- was motivated by that agenda. In my 19th century edition of the Decline and Fall, the editor scores Gibbon for exaggerating polytheistic tolerance in a lengthy footnote in minuscule print (pp 509-510).

Still, Gibbon's description of 1st century society as spiritually open agrees with the book of Acts. Luke famously says that the Athenians "would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new." So they heard from Paul and, after due amusement at the idea of resurrection, said they would hear him again (17.16-34).

Here is the town clerk calming an anti-Christian riot in Ephesus (19.35-37):

Men of Ephesus, who is there who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is temple keeper of the great Artemis, and of the sacred stone that fell from the sky? Seeing then that these things cannot be denied, you ought to be quiet and do nothing rash. For you have brought these men here who are neither sacrilegious not blasphemers of our goddess.

It worked.

My new book, The Diversity Culture, is based on the fact that our American culture is very like the 1st century. In particular it is like the Samaritan culture with which Jesus interacted in John 4.

Sychar was at the junction of trade routes, and had been for centuries. By the time Jesus sat at its well, the ethnicity of its inhabitants was profoundly mixed, even untraceable. The Samaritans had gone back and forth between polytheism and Judaism several times. And the woman Jesus met at that well was evidence that the family as an institution had broken down.

The similarities between Samaria and America are important.

I do not believe that American evangelicals have seen the height of Christianity's glory. The Victorian culture that did not survive the industrial age was historically Christianity's dusk. The story of the 19th century was one of Christendom sinking into unbelief while retaining the cultural habits of faith. That was truly a time far removed from the 1st century.

We are now entering an age of renewed opportunity.

Our contemporary culture of openness and the ancient culture in which Christ's message first thrived are strikingly similar. We are in a time of absolute spiritual darkness. The claim that there is one God will be as countercultural now as it was to ancient polytheism.

But if we can recover the ways Christ spoke his exclusive claims into cultural diversity, we will see him speak afresh. And we can recover them, because we are closer to the New Testament environment than we've been for centuries.

A couple of years ago, browsing through a used bookstore in St. Helena, CA, I discovered a paperback edition of Alexis de Tocqueville's classic, Democracy In America. The volume was flawless, the spine and the covers uncreased, the pages without a mark or fold. I bought it, only to discover that the book had a story to tell beyond Tocqueville's. St. Helena is a fascinating artifact in itself, one that dramatizes the problem I write about in my forthcoming book, The Diversity Culture.

The town's Main Street might have been the set for Bedford Falls, and you half expect to bump into George Bailey outside the Building and Loan. It was an all-American, white, Christian town, its economy agricultural and its ways rural and bourgeois.

St. Helena is anything but that now.

While its economy remains heavily agricultural, one has to specify that the crop is grapes and the product wine. The storefronts that once held dry goods, hardware, and clothing at middle-class prices now display oils and soaps, Cartier fountain pens, designer jeans, and prints of John Lennon drawings. The old movie theater that once would have shown It's a Wonderful Life now shows indie flicks.

Ethnically, there are Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Latinos, Blacks, and a healthy number of people whose background can't be determined at a glance. Sexually, there are gay and lesbian couples, and the number of married tourists spending the weekend is declining.

The spirituality of the town is Eastern. There are evidences of Buddhism and Hinduism, often in the forms of those systems' gods themselves. And the politics of St. Helena . . . well, the town's in the orbit of San Francisco.

Such was the context in which I opened my new literary treasure to find something I'd overlooked -- an inscription inside the front cover.

Uncle Jack has given this copy of Tocqueville to Kyle (my guess at the handwriting), addressing him pointedly as "Sir" and referring to his new "career defending America." The choice of Tocqueville tells us a great deal about Uncle Jack, as does his ebullient patriotism: democracy is "in Americans' souls," and it "empowers all great Americans onward to greatness."

Uncle Jack is a red-blooded, conservative, Fox News guy, busting his buttons about his nephew's joining up.

July 19, 2003 is well into the period when post-invasion Iraq was looking muddled, with WMD nowhere to be found and security almost as rare. But the invasion was still seen as a military success, and the 9-11 mindset remained strong.

So who sold Uncle Jack's gift, unread, the cover not even bent back, to that bookstore? Was it a disillusioned Kyle, rejecting the cause he had joined? Or was it a bereaved parent or spouse, embittered by too steep a sacrifice?

Either way, the gift given with pride seems to have been rejected viscerally. Uncle Jack would've felt right at home in old St. Helena. But the rejection of Democracy in America belongs to the new.

With America polarized about politics, sexual morality, war, and religion, any discussion about Jesus Christ is threatened by hot emotions. Evangelicals now are wondering how to navigate the hostility between left and right, the points of view of interest groups, and the intersections of church and state.

If Uncle Jack is an evangelical, he is probably trying to "reach" his St. Helena relatives, fumbling for some way to get his spiritual views across, and finding it hard even to get a response. If any dialogues about Christ do take place they do not go well, ending somewhere in "Bush lied, people died" territory.

The Diversity Culture is about a recovery of confidence that the Gospel can be heard powerfully in this atmosphere. It gives a tour of the barriers between evangelicals and other Americans. It develops a theology for reaching diverse groups. And it gives practical help for dialogue.

I wrote this book because I've lived at the intersections between evangelicals and the diversity culture my whole life. I graduated from public schools and a secular university. As readers of this blog know, I am committed to the arts. I am, in some ways, more at home in the diversity culture than among evangelicals. But I have also learned how needful the gospel is on the diversity culture's own terms. And I've learned how potent the message of Jesus Christ is when I give it as he did.

Main Street in St. Helena, changed though it certainly is, offers more opportunities for the gospel than ever.

by Matthew Raley It transpired in the media during Holy Week that evangelicalism, like Lazarus, is bound for the grave despite the earnest prayers of believers for healing. That this came to light is not cause for dismay.

The week began with a cover story by Newsweek's editor Jon Meacham, "The Decline and Fall of Christian America." Meacham gives a detailed analysis of data from, among other sources, the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey showing that the percentage of self-identified Christians has dropped by 10% over the last 20 years, and that the percentage of the religiously unaffiliated has doubled.

Meacham's thesis, that the decline of Christianity means the end of the religious right's "Christian nation" concept, is undeniable. His assessment that Christianity can benefit from a religious free market is, I think, also undeniable. Here's a quote:

The Founders' insight was that one might as well try to build a wall between economics and politics as between religion and politics, since both are about what people feel and how they see the world. Let the religious take their stand in the arena of politics and ideas on their own, and fight for their views on equal footing with all other interests. American public life is neither wholly secular nor wholly religious but an ever-fluid mix of the two. History suggests that trouble tends to come when one of these forces grows too powerful in proportion to the other.

One evangelical leader Meacham quotes extensively, Al Mohler, agreed with this assessment, while emphasizing that Christianity formed the soil in which such freedom grew. Mohler gave an endorsement to the article in comments on his blog, saying,

Mr. Meacham also suggests that this new situation is perhaps healthy for the church.  To this extent I agree -- the church gains a necessary knowledge any time the distinction between the church and the world is made more evident.  Our first concern is and must be the Gospel.  It is good that non-Christians know that they are not Christians and that Christians be reminded of that fact that what sinners need is the Gospel of Christ, not merely the lingering morality of the Christian memory.

This dialogue was provocative enough.

Then, on Good Friday, came an article in London's Daily Telegraph. The English paper, it seems, scooped the American press on a month-old speech by James Dobson. Upon leaving the board of Focus on the Family, Dobson talked to his staff about the political defeats sustained by the movement he has led for so many years. According to the Telegraph,

“We tried to defend the unborn child, the dignity of the family, but it was a holding action,” he said.

“We are awash in evil and the battle is still to be waged. We are right now in the most discouraging period of that long conflict. Humanly speaking, we can say we have lost all those battles.”

The article gave reactions from grass-roots evangelicals.

“Conservatives became so obsessed with the political process we have forgotten the gospel,” said Steve Deace, an evangelical radio talk show host in Iowa who broadcast a recording of Mr Dobson’s address, which he said had appeared on Focus on the Family’s website before disappearing.

Mr Deace added: “All that time spent trying to sit at the top table is not time well spent. Republicans say one thing and do another.”

Dobson claims to have been misquoted, though in an interview with Sean Hannity, he merely adds that he is not giving up the fight. He still acknowledges that the religious right lost in the recent elections, and he says nothing to persuade me that there is a prospect for winning politically in the future. Indeed, I found his political appraisals incoherent.

It is tempting to read these stories with a spirit of gloom. But giving in would be a mistake.

Readers of this blog will not be surprised by any of these media items. A week of bad PR has only brought to light what we have long known: Christianity is in trouble in America. Evangelicalism, as a cultural expression of faith in Christ, may well die in the sense that its institutions and ways will no longer be sustainable. I have been writing and preaching with a goal of preparing our church for this time.

But something new will emerge.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ remains the strongest force on earth. Al Mohler is right: when God's people see the distinction between the world and Christ's Kingdom sharply, they are ready to see the Gospel's power in new ways.

I am not convinced that we are in a dark time at all. To be sure, there will be ongoing cultural trauma, and much personal cost from the loss of the Judeo-Christian heritage. Still, I'm convinced that this cultural collapse has given us the biggest evangelistic opportunity in centuries. I wrote The Diversity Culture, to be released next month (excerpt in the blogroll), to show why I believe the opportunity is so large, and how we can take advantage of it by returning to the message and life of the Gospel.

America still has many people who have met the risen Christ, who know what He does, and who display Him faithfully. We have to remember why Lazarus went into that tomb: Jesus withheld healing so that he could give resurrection.

In my junior high years, I spent hours each week boning up on evidence that the Bible is historically accurate. I wore out Walter Martin tapes, marked up creationist books, and tried to turn conversations toward my findings. The most frequent response I got from non-Christians was no response. I was not saying anything that seriously challenged anyone's worldview. I was not provocative, as I had hoped to be. Nor was I even interesting.

My series on Jesus' truth claims in John 10 is a rare exercise for me in apologetics, the defense of Christian doctrine. We are contrasting Jesus' teachings with those of other religions, showing that the belief in Jesus as the only way to salvation is reasonable. Tagging along with this series, I'll devote a weekly post to some of the more technical issues.

As an opening question, why are my forays into apologetics so rare?

As a matter of theological principle, to begin with, I'm convinced that God's view of human life should not be defended, but asserted. The general tone of the Bible, whether history, epistle, or poetry, is declarative. The Lord spoke. The Lord acted. Heaven and earth obeyed. At some points in the Bible, human beings try to debate God (Job 38:1-42:6; Romans 9:14-21), but they are met with rebuke, not argumentation.

I favor this aggressive stance because God is the ultimate persuader of the human heart (1 Corinthians 2). My job as a preacher is assert his point of view and let his Spirit drive home the contrasts.

My reluctance to defend the Bible is founded on more than theological precept. I also have strategic doubts about the power of evidence-based arguments.

The accumulation of evidence to defend, say, the historicity of Noah's ark responds to modernist attacks according to modernist terms: the hard sciences define truth. In other fields of persuasion, like politics or law, each contender knows that he or she must set the terms of the debate in order to win. For Christians to have allowed modernists to frame spiritual questions in terms of human rationality has been to concede from the beginning that the Bible does not stand on its own. We have followed a losing strategy.

Human beings have to defend themselves according to God's terms, not the other way around. What possible confidence could I have in human justice?

Even further, I find logical problems with the evidence-based approach to apologetics, at least when its aims are confused.

The enterprise has been to confirm biblical veracity with independent data, say, from an archaeological dig. The prophet said this city would be swept into the sea, and lo, here are fibers from the very broom. But a conclusion heavier than the evidence will bear often gets dropped on the listener. Because we have the broom fibers, you should believe that the Bible is the true word of God.

In the first place, one would have to confirm every other detail in the Bible to reach that conclusion legitimately.

Additionally, and more importantly, the central assertion of Scripture is not that everything God says is true. The central assertion of Scripture is that "God spoke all these words." The reason to believe in the veracity of the Scriptures is that they were given by God. Even if one were able to find independent confirmation of every datum in the Bible, he still would not have proved that God is the Bible's source.

I rarely teach apologetics because the arguments are defensive. They can be legitimate, but are always limited. They can wear down an attacker and parry a blow, but they cannot convert the human soul.

Only a bold assertion of God's rights, without apology, can do that.

by Matthew Raley On March 20th in Dallas, TX, I will give a workshop on my new book, The Diversity Culture: Creating Conversations of Faith with Buddhist Baristas, Agnostic Students, Aging Hippies, Political Activitsts, and Everyone In Between.

This book is about the new openness to anything and everything in America, and about how you can be like Jesus in the midst of it. Here is an excerpt.

My workshop will be part of the Christian Book Expo, for which you can register at the top of my sidebar. If any of my Texas readers can be there, I'd love to meet you.

by Matthew Raley One of the most common searches that brings readers to Tritone Life is some version of, "Should Christians read Harry Potter?" Readers land on a post from my Tough Questions series last summer.

Evangelicals' visceral reaction to the Potter books continues to amaze me. The young wizard seems to symbolize their problem of how to guide children through the American diversity culture, the openness to anything and everything, without losing faith in Christ.

At Writing for the Soul, the annual conference of the Christian Writers Guild in Colorado Springs last weekend, this problem was a focus of attention, with Harry still being the reference point.

One catalyst for discussion was a keynote speech by Dr. Dennis Hensley, whose address on postmodernism was a tour de force of analysis and passion. He said that the negative view most pastors have of postmodernism needs to be revised. Postmodernism is indeed a tapestry of dangerous threads. But the increased diversity in American culture, the openness to other points of view, the humbling of Enlightenment arrogance are interwoven with threads of opportunity.

Dr. Hensley showed that our biggest opportunity as Christian writers is to create heroes who do not win their battles, but who successfully live in the moral universe God has created. Such heroes would be biblical: they would model submission to God's law in self-sacrifice, as Jesus did. They would also speak to postmodern imperatives, showing success through personal authenticity without empty triumphalism.

After such a rich address, the new cultural realities echoed in many conversations.

I talked with a Christian educator, asking whether he had tracked the spiritual journeys of his high school graduates. He had: "The majority are really struggling with their faith." They enter a culture teeming with sensual temptations, and saturated with moral and spiritual questions, and they flounder. My observations tallied with his: a deep crisis of faith incited by culture shock is now the norm.

Many believers, like my friend, assess the trials of young Christians honestly. Believers can see their kids struggling to keep and express faith in Christ without the cultural support past generations enjoyed. The response of compassion and grace is godly.

Still, many other believers are shocked by the diversity culture and its heroes. These believers will not countenance Harry, as if by pouring scorn on his popularity they can protect their kids from godlessness.

At lunch during the conference, someone asked me what books I've read to my boys. I said (trouble-making instinct freely acknowledged), "I read the first Harry Potter book with my 8-year-old. He loved it." Around the table there was silence, with one or two dangling jaws. My interlocutor said, "A pastor reading Harry Potter to his son?" Two other brave souls volunteered that they'd read the entire series.

That evening at dinner, Harry Potter came up again, and again I got surprised looks from around the table for saying that my son and I had read it. But we  discussed why Harry was so popular. A couple of writers said he was a well-drawn, living character. Rather than trying to make a "Christian" copy of him, they said, we should create vibrant characters of our own.

Artistic power won't save souls. But it might at least express Christ's truth.

In some ways, Harry speaks to postmodern children because he fits Dr. Hensley's description of a postmodern mythic hero. Harry succeeds according to a higher law, but doesn't always win. In other more important ways, Harry will continue to be a beloved character simply because J. K. Rowling has written classic stories.

For me, as a Christian parent, the issue is not so much the meaning of diversity culture heroes like Harry Potter. The issue is initiation.

Who will initiate my 8-year-old into the culture in which he must live?

If a postmodern true-believer initiates him, then my son will learn how to interpret this era, its stories, and its heroes from a point of view that may as well come from the Anti-Christ. Such is the power of the initiator.

But if I initiate my son into the culture in which he must live . . .