A Holy Difference
Cultural Sanctification: Engaging the World Like the Early Church
by Stephen O. Presley
Christendom is dead. In North America and Europe, church attendance is down, budgets are strained, and church buildings are being repurposed as gyms, boutiques, and dance clubs. In films and television, pastors have devolved from the heroic (Fr. Barry in On the Waterfront), through the well-meaning but marginal (Father Mulcahy in MASH), to today, when, if they appear at all, clergy are either mouthing fashionable clichés about social justice and psychological well-being, or else, by the time the credits roll, discovered to be corrupt and hypocritical.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
L. Joseph Letendre is the author of the recently published primer When You Pray: A Practical Guide to an Orthodox Life of Prayer. His writing has also appeared in The Reformation and Revival Journal and St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly. He holds an M.Div. from St. Vladimir's Seminary and is a parishioner at All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago.
subscription options
Order
Print/Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Order
Online Only
Subscription
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on culture from the online archives
31.6—November/December 2018
Victimhood Culture Scapegoats Its Very Source by Michael P. Foley
34.1—January/February 2021
What the World Needs Now It Hardly Knows by Anthony Esolen
more from the online archives
28.3—May/June 2015
Of Bicycles, Sex, & Natural Law
Describing Human Ends & Our Limitations Is Neither Futile Nor Unloving by R. V. Young
15.6—July/August 2002
Things Hidden Since the Beginning of the World
The Shape of Divine Providence & Human History by James Hitchcock
31.6—November/December 2018
on the Church's Response to the Anti-marriage Tide by Diane Woerner
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
