About The Center for Faith and Culture

A Christian can know what to believe about salvation and still wonder what Christianity has to do with Monday morning.

What does following Jesus change about the way we work?

Create art?

Educate children?

Think about politics?

Use technology?

Build businesses?

Understand sexuality and family?

Rest?

Participate in public life?

It is possible to have a carefully developed theology of church and a surprisingly undeveloped theology of almost everything else.

The L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture exists in that gap.

Its goal is to help Christians connect the truth of Christ with the whole of life.

Don't Separate Christ From Culture

Culture is happening whether Christians think about it or not.

Movies tell stories about what makes life meaningful.

Schools shape how people understand knowledge and humanity.

Workplaces develop assumptions about success.

Politics offers competing visions of justice.

Technology changes relationships.

Advertising teaches people what to desire.

Art captures what people love, fear, celebrate, and mourn.

Families pass beliefs from one generation to another.

Every part of culture carries ideas about what human beings are and what makes life worth living.

The Center for Faith and Culture wants Christians to recognize those assumptions and bring them into conversation with Scripture.

Christianity doesn't simply answer religious questions.

It provides a way of understanding reality.

Advance the Way of Christ

The Center summarizes its current vision with an important phrase:

Advance the way of Christ in all of culture.

The wording matters.

Its goal isn't merely to complain about culture.

Nor is it to imitate whatever culture currently celebrates.

Christians are called to follow Jesus faithfully within it.

That requires discernment.

Some cultural practices can be received with gratitude.

Some can be redirected.

Some require resistance.

Others can become opportunities for Christian creativity.

The important question becomes less about whether Christians should participate in culture and more about how Christians can participate as followers of Christ.

Theology Belongs Outside the Classroom

Because the Center is located within Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, serious theology naturally matters.

Doctrine of God.

Christology.

Creation.

Humanity.

Christian living.

Biblical interpretation.

Ethics.

Yet the Center doesn't want those doctrines trapped inside academic vocabulary.

If human beings are created in God's image, that should affect how Christians think about human dignity.

If God created the world, creation matters.

If Jesus is Lord, work cannot be spiritually neutral.

If human beings are fallen, political expectations should account for human sin.

If Christ is redeeming a people for himself, Christians should understand their place in the world differently.

Doctrine begins producing consequences.

Theology moves into life.

Equip the Pulpit, the Academy, and the Pew

The Center identifies three broad groups it wants to equip.

Students and people actively serving in ministry.

The academy.

Everyday Christians.

That combination is important.

Pastors need help addressing cultural questions faithfully.

Scholars need places for serious Christian intellectual work.

But the person working an ordinary job needs these conversations too.

A Christian teacher encounters cultural questions.

So does a parent.

A business owner.

An artist.

A student.

A counselor.

A voter.

A physician.

A construction worker.

Faith-and-culture ministry isn't reserved for professional theologians because culture isn't reserved for professional theologians.

Everyone lives inside it.

Give Christians More Than Reactions

Cultural engagement can easily become reactive.

Something happens.

Christians become angry.

Another controversy arrives.

Attention moves to the next controversy.

The Center wants something more durable.

Christians need a theological framework strong enough to evaluate cultural questions before the next crisis appears.

That requires formation.

Instead of only asking what Christians should think about today's headline, ask what Scripture teaches about God, humanity, creation, work, authority, sexuality, justice, beauty, truth, community, and human flourishing.

Those foundations travel from issue to issue.

A well-formed Christian becomes less dependent on outrage and more capable of discernment.

Talk About Work Because Christians Spend Their Lives Doing It

Work receives particular attention within the Center's content.

That makes sense.

For many Christians, work consumes an enormous portion of adult life.

Yet churches can unintentionally communicate that spiritually important work happens mainly through pastors, missionaries, or church programs.

The Center pushes against that divide.

Work belongs within Christian discipleship.

The way someone manages employees matters.

The way a teacher approaches students matters.

The way a business owner thinks about profit matters.

The way someone rests matters.

Ambition matters.

Productivity matters.

Vocation matters.

Christians don't temporarily stop following Jesus when the workday begins.

Engage Politics Without Making Politics Lord

Politics presents an especially difficult cultural arena.

Christians have responsibilities in public life.

Political decisions affect neighbors.

Justice matters.

Government matters.

At the same time, political identity can become so powerful that it begins discipling Christians more deeply than the Church does.

The Center tries to bring Christian theology into that tension.

The question isn't merely:

Which side wins?

It is:

What does faithfulness to Christ look like in the public square?

That requires conviction without allowing political power to become ultimate.

Christ remains King regardless of election results.

Take Beauty Seriously

Faith and culture also means talking about art.

Music.

Literature.

Film.

Museums.

Creativity.

Beauty.

These can sometimes receive less attention than politics or ethics because they appear less urgent.

But art shapes imagination.

Stories teach people what kinds of lives are admirable.

Music carries emotion.

Architecture shapes space.

Images can reveal what a culture worships.

Creativity itself reflects something about humans made in the image of a Creator.

The Center therefore treats the arts as part of Christian cultural engagement rather than an optional side conversation.

Bring Difficult Questions Into the Room

Some cultural conversations are uncomfortable.

Abortion.

Gender.

Sexuality.

Marriage.

Race.

Technology.

Political power.

Education.

Artificial intelligence.

Deconstruction.

Human identity.

Christians still have to think about them.

The Center creates space for articles, lectures, podcasts, conferences, and conversations where these questions can be examined through a Christian worldview.

The goal isn't controversy for its own sake.

It is equipping Christians to encounter difficult cultural questions without abandoning theological conviction or Christian character.

Intellectual Conviction Doesn't Require Intellectual Hostility

Cultural disagreement creates another challenge.

How should Christians treat people with whom they strongly disagree?

The Center increasingly emphasizes intellectual hospitality.

Hospitality doesn't require pretending every idea is equally true.

Christianity makes real truth claims.

But conviction doesn't require contempt.

A Christian can listen carefully.

Represent another person's argument accurately.

Ask good questions.

Recognize common ground.

Disagree clearly.

And still treat the other person as an image-bearer.

The manner of Christian engagement should reflect the Christ Christians are trying to defend.

Content Begins the Conversation

Much of the Center's public ministry happens through content.

Articles address cultural questions from Christian perspectives.

The Christ and Culture Podcast explores how believers can faithfully follow Christ within contemporary life.

Videos make lectures and discussions available beyond the seminary campus.

Resources allow pastors, students, teachers, and ordinary Christians to continue learning wherever they live.

The topics are deliberately broad because culture is broad.

Work.

Rest.

Politics.

Education.

Parenting.

Counseling.

Art.

Apologetics.

Gender and family.

Books.

Technology.

Current events.

The common question running underneath them is:

What does the way of Christ look like here?

Community Takes Formation Deeper

Content can inform someone.

Relationships help form someone.

That is why the Center also emphasizes community through mentorship, internships, fellowships, and relationships with practitioners and thought leaders.

Its mentorship program gives participants opportunities to explore faith-and-culture questions more deeply.

Research fellowships create space for focused intellectual work.

Students can learn alongside scholars and practitioners who are already thinking seriously about cultural engagement.

The Center isn't simply building an archive of Christian articles.

It wants to develop people capable of carrying these conversations forward.

Conversation Needs a Place to Happen

Events provide another layer.

Lectures.

Conferences.

Panel discussions.

Public conversations.

These formats allow Christians to encounter ideas in real time.

Speakers can make an argument.

Audiences can listen.

Questions can be raised.

Different perspectives can interact.

Past events and video resources have included discussions involving Christian thinkers such as Trevin Wax, Gavin Ortlund, Nathan Finn, and others addressing questions facing Christianity and contemporary culture.

The event itself eventually ends.

The conversation can continue.

Apologetics Belongs in Culture Too

Apologetics isn't treated merely as memorizing arguments for God's existence.

Cultural apologetics asks what people already believe about meaning, identity, morality, beauty, freedom, suffering, and human flourishing.

Every culture tells stories about these things.

Christians can listen to those stories.

Identify where they reveal genuine human longings.

Expose where cultural promises fail.

And show how the Christian story makes sense of the world people are already trying to understand.

A trip to an art museum can become apologetic reflection.

A conversation about work can reveal assumptions about identity.

A cultural trend can expose a deeper longing.

Apologetics moves into ordinary life.

Carry Forward L. Russ Bush's Vision

The Center bears the name of theologian and philosopher L. Russ Bush.

Bush spent much of his academic life helping Christians think seriously about the relationship between theology, philosophy, knowledge, culture, and the Christian worldview.

For the Center, his legacy isn't simply historical.

Its current leadership describes the ministry as the materialization of Bush's vision to connect theology with culture so that the Gospel might be made known.

The name therefore points toward a method.

Think carefully.

Believe faithfully.

Understand the world around you.

Then connect those things rather than keeping them apart.

Christ Is Lord of More Than Sunday

Ultimately, the Center's work rests on a remarkably comprehensive Christian claim.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

If that is true, there is no part of life where his lordship becomes irrelevant.

The classroom belongs to him.

The workplace belongs to him.

Art belongs to him.

Family belongs to him.

Politics belongs to him.

Rest belongs to him.

Our bodies belong to him.

Our minds belong to him.

Culture itself remains part of the creation over which Christ is King.

Christian cultural engagement therefore isn't mainly about winning a culture war.

It is about learning to live faithfully under Christ's lordship everywhere.

At the heart of the L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture is the conviction that Christians should not have to choose between serious theology and serious engagement with the world around them. As an equipping center of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, the CFC helps students, ministry leaders, scholars, and everyday Christians connect the truth of Christ with work, politics, education, art, family, ethics, apologetics, technology, and the rest of cultural life. Through articles, podcasts, lectures, events, mentorship, fellowships, and public conversations, it tries to move Christians beyond merely reacting to culture toward faithfully inhabiting it. Its central question is intentionally expansive: if Jesus Christ really is Lord, what does his way look like here?