Is there there "Christian" math? Is there "Christian" politics? Is there "Christian" street paving? Is there "Christian" book binding? According to the reigning evangelical "world view" the answer is yes but I have my doubts.

When I read the claim that there is a distinctively "Christian" ways of doing x, what I usually find is not an argument demonstrating a distinctively Christian way of doing p or q but a distinctively Christian interpretation of p or q. That's a different thing. Street sweepers sweep. Book binders bind. Mathematicians do math. Despite the repeated claim that there is a distinctively Christian way of baking I have yet to see how exactly the Christian baker bakes in a distinctively Christian way. He makes his dough and puts in the oven in the same way the pagan does. Why? That's the way God created the world. The pagan and the Christian live in a common, created world.

The Christian and the pagan baker have different explanations as to why baking works the way it does. In the article linked above, this is certainly the case for most of the philosophers whom he quickly surveys and in the last case (Dewey), I would argue that he's (Dewey) not really talking about math or baking at all. Dewey was just being silly. If one puts one's finger in a pipe and calls it baking, well, one can do that but one will get hungry pretty quickly and sane folk will just ignore the silly "baker" after they tire of the YouTube video.

The Christian says that p or q works the way it does because God is and has so ordered creation. The pagan has an alternate explanation. Now we're down to ultimate issues, and that's necessarily theological and religious. When, however, we're talking about proximate matters, it's still not obvious that there's a distinctively Christian way of doing p or q.

Why does it matter? It matters because the repeated claim that there's a Christian way of doing p or q has several unhappy consequences. 1) It tends to give license to mediocrity: "It doesn't have to be good because it's Christian baking, it's a ministry...." 2) It cheapens the adjective "Christian." By describing activity p or q as "Christian" we water down (by inflation) its force of meaning in the concrete. What is Christian in this world is what Christ has instituted: the church, the ministry of Word, sacrament, and discipline. The Christian life is Christian. The Christian faith is Christian. What else? 3) It gives Christians the idea that they have some secret insight into p or q --which claim is very powerful and hard to resist-- but it borders on gnosticism. It's a sort of secret knowledge gained mystically that can't be described. It tends to make us look like a cult. "I'm a Christian baker." Oh really how's that? "I bake to the glory of the Lord." Great.  "Do you make bread?" "Sure I do." "Is does it rise like 'pagan' bread?" "Yes." "Does it taste like 'pagan' bread?" "Yes." "Well, then, how exactly is it 'Christian' bread?" "It's consecrated to the Lord?" "I thought only the bread of the Lord's Supper was consecrated to the Lord?" "Uh, the world is sacramental."

And this is Reformed how? I don't remember our theologians and confessions describing the whole world as sacramental. Seems to me that baptizing the whole world as sacred takes us in a rather different direction.

Didn't Paul say something about this in 1 Cor 8? The meat offered to idols isn't really "pagan" at all. If the host says, "This was offered to idols" we don't eat it because that would involve us in a false sacrament and idolatry. Otherwise, we can eat it. Why? Because "meat" isn't pagan or Christian. It's all created by God and good. It's what folk do with it that matters.

If we talk nonsense about "Christian" baking, paving, or bookbinding we reduce our credibility when it comes to the gospel. We make public, not gnostic, truth claims about the gospel. 

We need to think very carefully about this whole business of the adjective "Christian" or the adverb "Christianly."