How Can We Make Apologetics Culturally Relevant?

At the dawn of our twenty-first century, the popular culture in the United States increasingly sees interpretations of truth, goodness, beauty, knowledge (what we can know), and what exists in terms of the dichotomy of left and right, progressive and conservative.[1] Our culture’s interpretative grid consists of this ever-widening chasm of political categories in which the individual must adhere to the views of the dominant majority (or loudest voice) lest he is called a bigot, hater, or worse.

In this cultural context, many understand orthodox Christian views as stemming from the unpopular “right” and, as a result, these are eschewed or disparaged. How, then, can we defend and promulgate the truths of Christianity? In other words, how can we make apologetics culturally relevant?

In what follows, we will explain how we may apply classical rhetoric to our politically dichotomous society, through the research of moral psychology, to construct a culturally relevant apologetic.

Lessons from Aristotle: Classical Rhetoric

It is well accepted that we humans are not just rational or merely emotional beings; we are both. This implies that the best type of persuasive apologetic appeal to others is one that engages both reason and emotion, the mind and the heart. More than 2,300 years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote a treatise dedicated to understanding persuasion that involved the heart and mind, titled Rhetoric. According to Aristotle, the term rhetoric refers to “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.”[2]

Rhetoric, which I will call classical rhetoric to distinguish it from our current negative understanding of the term, is the art of persuasion, though not through deceptive means.

According to Aristotle and other classical rhetoricians, the best way to persuade someone is to adopt a tripartite or three-pronged approach that includes ethos, logos, and pathos. That is, the speaker or writer must appeal to

(1) the way the audience perceives the communicator’s trustworthiness (ethos),

(2) the intellect of the audience (logos), and

(3) the emotions (pathos) of the audience. This way, the appeal has a much greater chance of persuasive success.

Before we can apply this technique, however, we must understand our culture. We must ask ourselves: How can we couch the veracity of orthodox Christian doctrine and practice using ethos, logos, and pathos in our politically driven culture to invest it with relevance?

We will presents one possible method taken from the field of moral psychology. This method may help us to construct apologetic appeals to social progressives who oftentimes vilify Christian doctrine and practice. Beyond this, there are many other methods and people with other types of worldviews for which we must construct other types of apologetic appeals.

Lessons from Jonathan Haidt: Moral Psychology

According to moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, one reason for the political and religious divide that we currently experience in today’s society is due to the different sets of moral foundations to which people of the different sides of the political divide adhere.[3] Though Haidt defines moral foundations as universal matrices of cognitive moral modules constructed by culture, we may understand these more simply as cultural sets of moral values or ideals.[4]

According to Haidt, social conservatives have a wider moral foundation than social progressives in that they ground morality, almost equally, on the ideals of care, liberty, fairness, loyalty, authority, and sanctity.[5] On the other hand, social progressives ground morality mostly on care, liberty, and fairness.[6]

In other words, progressives promote empathy and solidarity with those who are oppressed (care). For them, the practice of social justice (fairness) and the observance of the “rights” of others (liberty) are most important. We can agree that these are all wonderful ideals. However, social progressives lack, according to Haidt, a strong moral sense of loyalty, authority, and sanctity. For example, progressives are usually not patriotic (loyalty and authority), they do not adhere to any established religion (loyalty and authority), and they do not consider their body or anything else to be holy (sanctity).

If Haidt’s research is accurate, it should make a world of difference regarding our apologetic toward social progressives. For instance, though we place great significance in our sense of loyalty to Christ, participation in the church, and in the authority of the Bible, our apologetic must not begin with these points if we want to influence secular social progressives. Also, we will not get very far if we begin with an appeal to the sanctity of the human fetus or sex. We must structure our initial apologetic around the moral foundations of those to whom it is directed. That is, it is wise to use classical rhetoric along with the social progressive moral foundations as common ground from where we may begin our apologetic. In Acts 17:22- 33, the apostle Paul began his preaching at the Areopagus by starting on common ground.[7]

Examples of Apologetic Appeals

How, specifically, can we use classical rhetoric together with the findings of moral psychology to come up with apologetic appeals to social progressives that do not compromise orthodox Christian doctrine?

Evaluating the Classical Rhetorical-Moral Psychological Apologetic Appeal

Further, in regard to pathos, the appeal to emotion fallacy, the error in reasoning committed when one gives an emotional appeal as if it was a reason for a position.

They were not arguments. Classical rhetoric helped to structure and focus on particular truths of the Christian faith, thereby creating an apologetic on what we identified to be common ground.

In addition to learning from classical rhetoric and moral psychology, we must remember that we are not only emotional and rational beings, we are also spiritual beings. That is, we are influenced by spiritual forces, as Ephesians 6:12 reminds us: “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

Ephesians 6:12 applies to all cultures at all times and in all places, so it also applies to ours. Nonbelievers, as persons, are not our enemies. Our enemies are the spiritual forces of evil that have taken captive their hearts and minds. That is why we must bathe the preparation of our apologetic in prayer, and we must deliver it with gentleness and respect, as urged in 1 Peter 3:15.

Let us, then, pray to the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to help us to construct a rhetorically and culturally relevant apologetic that employs knowledge of cultural assumptions wisely and lovingly.

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[1] In general and for this article, we may understand the term progressive as referring to the political view of those who favor the implementation of social reforms that dislodge many traditional moral values. On the other hand,

conservative refers to the political view of those who are more cautious concerning social reforms, lest these overturn traditional values.

[2] Aristotle, Rhetoric, trans. W. Rhys Roberts, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, Richard McKeon, ed. (New York: Random House, 1941), 1327.

[3] Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Pantheon, 2012). Though I recommend the results of Haidt’s research to create persuasive apologetic appeals, it does not mean that I agree with his explanations for the results of his research.

[4] Haidt, The Righteous Mind, 123-127.

[5] Haidt, The Righteous Mind, 305-306.

[6] Haidt, The Righteous Mind, 295-296.

[7] I realize that some do not agree that the apostle Paul began on common ground

in Acts 17. However, given that the Apostle was educated in a major intellectual

Hellenistic city, Tarsus, and that he seemed to be well versed in Hellenistic

philosophy, it seems at least possible that he would have known about and maybe even employed the technique of beginning on common ground.