Chad Cannon

Most Christians are terribly naive when it comes to how culture “works.” Some think, “If we just disciple enough people, the culture will turn around.” Others think, “If we take back the institutions, we can restore Christian America.” Both are wrong. Peter Berger helps us see why. Culture isn’t a machine you can steer. It’s a living ecosystem—a web of meanings, institutions, and shared assumptions about what’s normal. People shape institutions, institutions shape people, and before long, we inhabit a world that feels inevitable. That means converting individuals or seizing institutions won’t change the culture. Hearts can be renewed, laws rewritten—but unless the plausibility structures (the stories, symbols, and norms that make faith believable) are reshaped, the world stays the same. Christian nationalists miss this. You can legislate behavior, but you can’t legislate belief. You can hold political power, but you can’t compel meaning. Faith forced loses its power. Similarly, those who think discipleship alone transforms the world forget that social systems shape how we think and what we love long before we “decide” anything. True change doesn’t come from conquering culture. It comes from grace breaking into it—reconstituting reality, telling a better story, and building communities that quietly live a different kingdom. Culture changes not when Christians “win,” but when grace reshapes what we find believable, beautiful, and true.