Dale T. Irvin

“The success of the Christian movement drew churches deeper into the cultural worlds around them. Indeed, the very pattern of incarnational adaptation that compelled the movement to translate itself into new cultural forms at times could work against exercise of critical judgments. Many today look back upon the early Christians' responses to the issues of slavery and women's subordination and rightly decry the lack of greater justice. At the same time the reason Christians often reflected more of their surrounding culture than we might have wished has to do with the same principle of incarnation that called them to translate the gospel into new situations. The identity of the risen Christ was certainly seeping into new cultures and locations, but this does not mean that Christians were immediately abandoning aspects one might today regard as unjust. Cultural transformations came slowly, and not without great deliberation and struggle. In the end, churches were able to transform cultures and political environments only because they had at least in certain aspects become a part of them. Cooptation was an ever-present danger, but the risk is inherent in the practice of incarnation. The ongoing process of becoming incarnate within a culture and of transforming a culture is one that continues down through the ages in all Christian traditions.”
― Dale T. Irvin, History of the World Christian Movement, Vol. 2: Modern Christianity from 1454-1800