I would like to paraphrase Dr. King’s council on the Church and State relations in stating “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the [culture], but rather the conscience of the [culture].” I would even argue that Gospel is not to be seen as separate from culture; “Gospel is culture”. We have forgotten that we are called to be the salt of the earth, and the light of the world (Mat. 5: 13-14). Speaking at a time of cultural upheaval Dr. King argued, that church “is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.” Today, this is particularly true in the West.

By taking a posture of silence and mostly a reactionary approach, we have surrendered to the cultural rejection of the sovereignty and ownership of God over all of our life and have thereby condemned the soul of Western civilization. Yes, we are called not to love the world, but we are surely called to impact the world so that the world may love the Lord. It is true that no earthly kingdom can replace the kingdom of God, but we are called to pray for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. This act of prayer reified in all aspects of life recognizes God’s sovereignty and ownership over all of creation. In the midst of seeming cultural captivity, Christ is not only the final word; He is the Word that continually redeems our past, present and future.

Man without God is doomed within a vicious cycle of sin that prompts him to call good evil and evil good. We as a society are far from gauging the ethical ramifications of our unguarded exploits. We may not have completely abandoned the truth, but we have become habitual in taking a piece of truth captive and detaching it from other truths. Truth is now fragmented and therefore relativized to the realm of subjective preferences. We have atomized knowledge so that we may manipulate, control and use it for our own personal gains. Facts, ideas and other elements of intellectual life have been consciously trimmed off from truth and knowledge has been relegated to the realm of doubt and skepticism.

People now mostly conceive their world in tiny bits of disconnected reality based on their mental appropriation and they experience those realities based on their personal feelings. Unfortunately, many Christians have also succumbed to this. Truth is now taken to be a fabricated knowledge meant to be harvested, processed, and marketed. It is now naked of any soul-commanding dimension. Our postmodern impulse toward atomizing culture into politically correct categories has made our intellectual vocations no longer vulnerable to knowledge tensed with moral and spiritual values.

It is within this cultural landscape and amidst a crisis of a grand narrative and bleak realities HΞRITΛGΞ COUNSΞL seeks to develop Christian influencers who are willing to demonstrate an enduring resolution to the most vexing issues that concern our common public life. Every generation cultivate their influencers, who may either bring about redemptive transformation or moral degradation. The choice and responsibility is ours’ to help believers know this and prepare them to vanquish every argument and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2 Cor. 10:5).

HΞRITΛGΞ COUNSΞL seeks to enthrone Christ in our public life by summoning the church into the margins and also to the center of cultural influence, not because God is not already there, but because God has commissioned us to be his ambassadors of reconciliation. To traverse ethereal and unfulfilling promise of radical individuality by fighting against a culture that is in the effort of making everyone common. HΞRITΛGΞ COUNSΞL therefore aims to create uncommon people who are willing to battle for the human spirit and live for the sake of Christ and His kingdom.