“Paul Tillich asserted that the ‘religious dimension’ is ‘never absent from cultural creations.’ The follow-up question is whether a particular cultural activity is divine or demonic in inspiration and destination. For while God’s love may keep the original human vocation intact, yet unless and until the Logos returns, and is received, we suffer as part of our fallen and corrupt condition (says Athanasius) a downward drag on our senses and our minds. So, in a fallen and corrupt world, a liturgy celebrating redemption is likely in the first place to be counter-cultural. It was for that that the Law and the Prophets of Yahweh’s Israel had to contend amid Canaanite culture – where the priests of Baal engaged in self-mutilation, where children were devoted by fire to Molech, and where the charms of Ashteroth led even a Solomon astray. If there were (let us just suppose) a culture in which theatrical abuse of the human body were sponsored by a national endowment for the arts; in which an abortion industry described itself as health care; and in which deities were revived by the philosophers of a new age: then it might be that the worshipping community of Christians would stand out amid such a society by its regard for the flesh that the Word created and assumed, its placement of infants under its catechetical or baptismal care, and its gathering in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
From: Embracing Purpose by Geoffrey Wainwright
http://www.amazon.com/Embracing-Purpose-Essays-World-Church/dp/0716206323/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1324951224&sr=8-4