Recently I had the pleasure of being one of the featured speakers for the Ancient Faith Speaker Series, offered by the St. Raphael School.
It was going to be essentially the same lecture I gave at AFCon last year, but that changed as soon as the world went crazy. So although the bones of the lecture are similar to my lecture on How to Create Christian Culture, it became mostly all about how to do that most important of tasks in a new world dominated by fear, by a loss of ritual, and by a strange rise of conspiracy theories on all sides.
I’m talking about making culture, of course. But in a new world.
For me, the lecture was extremely therapeutic. I had been on the verge of something like burnout for about a month without realizing it. Putting into spoken word everything that I had been feeling, then giving it form for a group of people who were interested in the same thing I was–it was exactly what I needed.
Perhaps you will be similarly affected by it. I hope you will.
Here’s the official summary of the event from St. Raphael’s own website:
Don’t Just Look for Good Culture. Go Make it!
What is the purpose of a Christian life? We get asked this question all the time. And there are so many answers that it can get bewildering. But what if the answer was something we never considered at all? What if the purpose of a Christian life was to create Christian culture?
That’s exactly what Russian writer and philosopher Ivan Ilyin thought. And He didn’t mince his words:
The Gospel teaches not flight from the world, but the Christianization of the world.  Thus, the sciences, the arts, politics, and the social order can all be those spiritual hands with which the Christian takes the world.  And the calling of a Christian is not to chop off those hands, but to imbue their work and toil with the living spirit of Christ.  Christianity has a great calling, which many do not ever realize.  This purpose can be defined as the creation of a Christian culture.”
In this lecture, we will break down Ilyin’s handbook for the creation of Christian culture in a post-Christian world. Not only will you come away with a renewed appreciation for the role of art and culture in your life, but hopefully you will be inspired to go and create something beautiful yourself!
