Wayne in Maine wrote:Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God. Isn't a kingdom a culture?
I think the New Testament answer is no, it's not.
Culture was one of the things that threatened the Kingdom of God in the early New Testament days, leading to disputes between Jews and Greeks and others. The Revelation tells us who we will find in heaven:
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands,
So it's not a culture in the sense of one shared language or nation, and the Kingdom of God does not eliminate existing tribes and peoples and languages. In the Kingdom of God, some pray in German, others in Greek, others in Arabic, others in English.
I think the
Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus puts this well:
For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers.
— what the soul is in the body, Christians are in the world. The soul is dispersed through all the members of the body, and Christians are scattered through all the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, yet is not of the body; and Christians dwell in the world, yet are not of the world. The invisible soul is guarded by the visible body, and Christians are known indeed to be in the world, but their godliness remains invisible.
Or maybe I don't understand what you are getting at:
Wayne in Maine wrote:It may not be the solely the Hutterite or Amish or Mennonite culture, and members of those cultures may very well not be members of God's kingdom, nevertheless, I think discipleship and the Kingdom of God create a culture not merely a heart felt religion.
What do you mean by "culture" here? The first disciples of Jesus remained Jews, yet left everything to follow him. Did they create a "new culture" by wandering around and preaching to people? Did the church in Jerusalem or Galatia create a "new culture"? I think discipleship and the Kingdom of God create worship, thanksgiving, genuine love, holiness, the fruit of the Spirit, and entrusting ourselves completely to God, calling us to serve other people and put God first in everything. And that may be easier in some cultures than others, but culture alone only creates old wineskins, and the Kingdom of God is always new wine that cannot be confined by the wineskins of culture. Cultural Christianity is a contradiction in terms.
Discipleship is never described as creating a new culture in the New Testament. We need to define discipleship as the New Testament does.