The best and shortest definition of culture is, ‘How we do things around here’. This includes what gets done but also drives deeper to why things are done the way they are. Culture is grounded in beliefs and values which those in a group or organization often take for granted.
My daughter is getting married next May, which means just one short year of planning and strategizing for the Big Day! The happy couple, together for four years already, were asking what might be included in a marriage preparation course.
One of the most important things that marriage preparation does is enable reflection on culture. This isn’t just about toothpaste tubes. Different families treat these humble implements in different ways and there isn’t a right way of doing it – unlike loading the dishwasher, obviously.
A couple looking forward to the rest of their lives together will find many cultural bumps on the road ahead, particularly in the area of child-rearing, where differences in upbringing will replicate themselves across the generations. Sensitive grandparents will need to learn the house rules when they come to babysit.
A more complicated organization than a family, such as a Cathedral, contains many different subcultures. How the Works Department goes about doing things is different from the Music Department, and even within the Music Department, how the staff see the world is different from the chorister parents. It is not always easy to reconcile these various worlds.
The easiest way is to muddle along at a distance, minimizing contact. It’s reflected in the joke about the special place in heaven reserved for a particular religious group. When the new soul touring the celestial city asks why this should be so, the angel replies, ‘It’s because they think they’re the only ones here’. Living out of touch with others is a sure way of propping up our preconceptions.
But interesting things happen when our cultures are challenged by encounter and honest exchange. We begin to see other points of view and other ways of doing things which seem to work. We begin to see what is truly important to us and why. Someone once described this process as ‘walls down, roots down’. We may still choose to inhabit our culture, but we will do so more thoughtfully and pliably.
The Church is supposed to be a culture governed by Christ who ‘broke down the dividing wall of hostility between us’. That is not to say that churches of different cultures do not exist – not everyone enjoys Choral Evensong and robed processions, I’m told – but it is true that all churches need to reflect on their culture to ensure that it itself does not become enshrined and immutable.
Cultures change as people join them from outside, and as those remaining outside ask why they have been excluded. It’s not just the Church but any organization which, to prosper, must pose the question, how must we change what we do around here?