8/9/23
I was culling my library the other day (which is something I need to do more often – I have far more books than I do shelves) and came across a stick of dynamite from 1987: E.D. Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. In it, Hirsch argued that children in the U.S. were being deprived of the basic knowledge that would enable them to function in contemporary society.
The book itself was short; he made his arguments in a mere 149 pages. The fun part (and the controversial part, and probably the only part most people read) was the massive appendix (that burst) of 5,000 essential facts that every culturally aware American should know. That appendix was 63 pages, single spaced, with double columns to a page - no details, no comments, just a list.
I decided to keep that book.
A LOT has changed since Hirsch’s book was published and it’s considerably out of date. For example, I just looked at the list and saw that “International Monetary Fund” was followed by “Interrogative sentence.” What’s missing?
Internet.
So, yes, Hirsch’s book needs to be updated. God bless the person who attempts it . . .
I don’t know if there exists a Christian version of Hirsch’s book - a Cultural Literacy: What Every Christian Needs to Know. Maybe some brave soul has taken a stab at it. . . I don’t even know if it would be possible in the 21st century.
And with all the English translations of the Bible (according to the American Bible Society, there are around 900 either whole or in part), and with all the denominations (this one is hard to swallow, especially since I’ve been preaching on the importance of unity – the world Christian Encyclopedia counted 33,830 denominations worldwide), and with the explosion of religious music, can there even be such as a thing as “Christian cultural literacy”?
We’d have to go back to a much simpler time. We’d have to scrape off the barnacles accrued over 2,000 years of history and culture and interpretation and divisions and . . .
We’d have to go back to the beginning.
If you remember Romans 16:17, Paul warned the people: “I urge you, brothers and sisters, to keep an eye on those who cause dissensions and offenses, in opposition to the teaching that you have learned; avoid them.” What was that teaching?
In I Corinthians 15, Paul laid out the very basics of the Christian faith – the foundation. Having urged the believers to hold firmly to the message that he proclaimed to them, Paul then spelled out what that message was:
“For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. . .”
This is the gospel in a nutshell (in Acts 5:30-32, our reading for today, Peter says the same thing) and it’s believed that this was the basic statement of faith people would assent to before they were baptized. Here we have the non-negotiables, the things of “first importance.”
Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.
He was buried,
He was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures [notice that’s twice!]
He appeared to eyewitnesses.
These are the basics –certain, unchanging, unassailable and absolute. Notice Paul states twice that these fundamental truths are rooted in scriptures – which means the scriptures (and by this he means what we call the Old Testament) would have to be part of our common Christian culture as well.
This is where we’d start with a common Christian culture - a common set of beliefs that would define what being a Christian is. Anything else would proceed from there.
So, what do you think? What do you believe should be on a list of essential facts that every Christian should know? I’m really interested in what you think!