From a post by Larry a couple of weeks ago:

What difference does belief make? What difference does it make to follow the teachings of Jesus? H. Richard Niebuhr addressed the issue in Christ and Culture and concluded that dynamic interaction between Christians and culture will change both.

The answer to these questions will be more determinative for the future of faith communities than the current cultural debates dividing them. The earliest followers of Jesus described their faithfulness as following The Way (Acts 19:23). The Way was an active journey through which commitment to God and other persons was expressed. And it brought them into conflict with the existing order. It was about what you live for, and in those early days, what you were prepared to die for.

More than dogma, it was how you lived your life in faithfulness, and it remains so today; ideals that cannot be contained by the smallness and shallowness of a culture of celebrity, consumption and politics.

Perspectives: The Media and Junk Culture

The amount of people who measure faith in terms of some allegiance to certain dogma continues to stagger the imagination.  How did we get from “The Way” to “Being Saved”?  It seems to me that this “status” emphasis over the “faithfulness” emphasis is another form of this “consumer culture” in that people gather their “pieces” of that status in the same manner as consumers accumulate gadgets and signs of social status,  and then present that “collection” to the theological fray,  and back their “camp”.