{"id":3348,"date":"2022-03-21T01:49:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-21T01:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=3348"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:34:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:34:11","slug":"how-to-turn-a-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=3348","title":{"rendered":"HOW TO TURN A CULTURE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Today I dove into my first book about John Wesley. It&#8217;s a history book covering the state of England&#8217;s culture before and after the revival that Wesley instigated.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So far, I am neck deep in the &#8220;before&#8221;. That would be the early 1700s.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have to say, it&#8217;s pretty shocking stuff. My mental image of British culture is &#8220;stiff upper lip&#8221; types sipping tea, eating crumpets, and speaking proper English.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here&#8217;s what I don&#8217;t picture:<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>Widespread drunkenness on gin.<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Open corruption among government officials.<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Rat infested prisons.<\/li>\n\n\n<li>A list of 160 offenses for which even children could be publicly executed by hanging.<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Large crowds showing up for those hangings, creating a party atmosphere.<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Three out of every four children in London dying before their fifth birthday.<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Orphanages where babies were intentionally starved to death.<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Brutal forms of entertainment involving deaths of animals.<\/li>\n\n\n<li>And, of course, all the horrors of the slave trade.<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As I am reading, here is where my mind goes:<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A) Modern American culture is bad, but maybe not as bad as English culture once was. There&#8217;s hope for us yet.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">B) If Wesley had a hand in turning British culture around, it was not primarily through political activism. And it was not exactly through preaching against particular cultural sins.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was through his efforts at introducing people to Christ AND then developing them as disciples.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Christians today talk a lot about the culture war.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If we were serious about winning the culture war, we would be devoting more effort to <b><i>evangelism <\/i><\/b>and <b><i>discipleship<\/i><\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today I dove into my first book about John Wesley. It&#8217;s a history book covering the state of England&#8217;s culture before and after the revival that Wesley instigated. So far, I am neck deep in the &#8220;before&#8221;. That would be the early 1700s. I have to say, it&#8217;s pretty shocking stuff. My mental image of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3348"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3349,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3348\/revisions\/3349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}