This paper explores the origins of two different emergences of the Christian worldview concept, and their relationship to understandings of cultural conflict. It will offer an analysis of the historical, cultural, and theological context for each emergence. In both cases, worldview was what Ian Hunter has termed a “combat concept.” Section I of the paper will offer an overview of the origins of Christian worldview thinking in the late nineteenth century through the thought of James Orr (1844–1913) and Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920). Section II will deal with the second major emergence of Christian worldview as a combat concept in the 1970s, focusing on figures like Francis Schaeffer (1912–1984), Chuck Colson (1931–2012), and Nancy Pearcy (1951–). Both contexts exhibited increased cultural and religious pluralism, and conservative Christians displayed a heightened sense of ideological conflict. Worldview became a tool for differentiation from, and contention with, the “other.”

Today, Christianity is often described as a ‘worldview’, especially among Reformed evangelicals in the USA. In this article I return to the 1890 lectures where Scottish theologian James Orr adapted the concept of Weltanschauung for Christian purposes. Although it was coined by Immanuel Kant in 1790, and primarily used in subsequent decades to theorise cultural difference and evaluate aesthetic expression, Orr nevertheless claims that the idea of a worldview is ‘as old as the dawn of reflection’ and thus appropriate to articulating Christianity. I examine Orr's engagement with the Kantian and emerging historicist context, paying particular attention to his epistemological and aesthetic citations and showing how Orr both adopts and departs from the characteristic features of the Kantian subject. I conclude by assessing the philosophical and theological costs of this project that, among other things, positions Christianity for perpetual culture war within secular societies similarly shaped by the post-Kantian subject.