Where in the World Is the Church?: A Christian View of Culture and Your Role in It [Paperback]

Michael Scott Horton (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 210 pages
• Publisher: P & R Publishing (May 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0875525652
• ISBN-13: 978-0875525655
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #906,208 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael S. Horton

White Horse Inn, President
White Horse Inn Radio Show, Co-Host
Editor-in-Chief, Modern Reformation Magazine
J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California

B.A., Biola University; M.A., Westminster Seminary California; Ph.D., University of Coventry and Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.

Michael Horton is the president of White Horse Inn, a multi-media catalyst for Reformation. He is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation magazine (www.modernreformation.org) and co-host of the nationally syndicated White Horse Inn radio broadcast (www.whitehorseinn.org). Michael Horton is also the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California. Before coming to WSC, Michael Horton completed a Research Fellowship at Yale University Divinity School. A member of various societies, including the American Academy of Religion and the Evangelical Theological Society, Michael Horton is the author/editor of twenty books, including a series of studies in Reformed dogmatics published by Westminster John Knox, whose final volume (_People and Place: A Covenant Ecclesiology_) was published in 2008 which won the 2008 Christianity Today Book of the Year award in Theology.

His most recent books are _The Gospel-Driven Life_, _Christless Christianity_ and _People and Place: A Covenant Ecclesiology_. He has written articles for _Modern Reformation_, _Pro Ecclesia_, _Christianity Today_, _The International Journal of Systematic Theology_, _Touchstone_, and _Books and Culture_.

Michael Horton is associate pastor of Christ United Reformed Church in Santee, California, and lives in Escondido, with his wife, Lisa, and four children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Enlightening, February 6, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Where in the World Is the Church?: A Christian View of Culture and Your Role in It (Paperback)

This book is a good warning to Christians who tend to hide from the world for fear of losing their faith. The author argues for the Christian's liberty to read fiction, to listen to good music, or to engage in scientific research without feeling guilty that his activities are "purely secular" and that God's time is too valuable to be "wasted" on such things. Prudent participation in culture is both a duty and a pleasure. It helps God's children to see Him as the Creator of everything that is beautiful and brilliant and to be able to say with J.S. Bach: SDG (Soli Deo Gloria)! The author does a wonderful job supporting his conclusions Biblically.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You are free indeed!, March 28, 2010

By 

E. J. Ludwig (Brooklyn, NY, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Where in the World Is the Church?: A Christian View of Culture and Your Role in It (Paperback)

Prof. Horton's book is a tour de force wherein he discourses on the lofty premises and conclusions of R. Niebuhr, Thomas Reid, Immanuel Kant, David Hume, and the evidentialists. Although written in a genial, even effervescent style, it is actually geared to the well-educated reader.

There are many "main points" woven together in this book, but I'll just mention a couple. First, the evangelical church in the USA tends to be of the world but not in it. For Prof. Horton, our churches have promoted a kind of ghetto mentality wherein many churches avoid "the world" instead of "worldliness." Yet, at the same time, the low brow music in churches, mistaken views that they are escaping "the world" while at the same time using current events, marketing, and pop psychology as their m.o., and a general misunderstanding of the difference between common grace and special grace/revelation have together led to a non-Biblical, anti-theological positioning that draws the church away from Christ, not towards Him.

Second, Prof. Horton, if I read him correctly, posits that the Christian scientist,artist, or educator need not feel guilty if he or she is striving for excellence in terms of his or her field of endeavor. They are not wasting their time as Christians by pursuing "art" or "science" as their callings in life. They do not need to justify their artistic or scientific work to themselves or others by forcing the issue and making the art or science "Christian" nor should they see their main role in the workplace as one of witnessing for the Lord. Rather, Almighty God has given us our respective callings and that understanding will motivate and uplift us in our work.

He really clears the air on many issues that have become hyped. For example, I heard a preacher this morning speaking about Revelation. He said to the youth gathered before him, "In Revelation there's an angel throwing fireballs at the Earth." Then he added, "How's that for a ministry?!" In another part of the lesson, he announced that one-third of the Earth's population -- about two billion out of six billion -- would be killed in the space of seven years. He was positively gleeful about this, commenting, "How's that for some rock 'n roll?...."
Somehow, I don't think Prof. Horton would appreciate this type of exegesis.

He also disparages the Christian right in politics, especially those Christians who become discouraged or glum about particular election results. I guess that's me as I'm still praying to be able to look beyond the setbacks for America of the Obama administration. Also, I am more moralistic in my outlook, I think, than Prof. Horton would find appropriate. However, the fact that I fall under his criticisms at a couple points in no way takes away from the merit of this book. If you love the arts and sciences and love your work, whatever God Almighty has called you to do, you will be encouraged and uplifted by this book.

Again, I could barely put it down, but read it from cover to cover at two sittings.

5.0 out of 5 stars TAKING CHRIST (not the Bible) TO WORK, SCHOOL, AND PLAY, January 23, 2012

By 

Elizabeth Arundel (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Where in the World Is the Church?: A Christian View of Culture and Your Role in It (Paperback)

There are many who can recommend books to give young people in preparation for work or further education after graduation. Until now, I have not been among them, but here is a book I do recommend in that it puts vocation firmly and squarely "in the marvelous theater of God's glory" in Calvin's words. After all, as Christians, we have a dual citizenship in the world and in heaven. But what does this mean? How does it play out in our secular vocations?

I once knew a young girl who would take her large leather Bible to school (not a seminary) and work, displaying it prominently, reading it in well-trafficked halls and common rooms, and more or less shoving it under the noses of her peers. If there was any excellence in her work, it went unnoticed under such glaring religiosity, the window-dressing of her piety. She did no service to Christ by such a show, rather harm as an awkward fellow traveler in the world among Christians and pagans alike.

But neither should we hide our light under a bushel, as Christ admonishes us, while we participate in the scientific, technological, and culture-making activity of the world, and here it is that Horton's book is most useful to those embarking on their vocations to which they were called by the God who endowed them with the gift and talents to pursue them in excellence and to His glory. "A Christian," writes Horton "must participate in culture in a manner that recognizes creation, not redemption, as the appropriate theological basis for such activity." In the arena of the arts, for example, he points out that when we attempt to mix the secular and the sacred "we get bad theology and bad art" (e.g., the Left Behind series). "Spiritual warfare fiction," Horton writes, "has more in common with Neoplatonic (gnostic) dualism ... than with the sovereign God of history."

Horton reinforces our sound irenic heritage and builds on the Reformed theological view of our secular vocation by reminding us that we are to be productive, nay, high-achieving citizens of the world (as long as we are in, not of it) while being citizens of heaven.

This book is written with passion and theological depth, with an inspiring look along the way at Christians who have taken the world to the mountaintops of their professions to get a glimpse of the magnificence of His creation.