On Culture Wars Part 2

A few thoughts:

According to a Christian Century blog post entitled "Fog of the Culture War" by Rodney Clapp, author of the uber-fabulous "Families at the Crossroads" (which I just finished), we need to recognize that the culture wars represent a confusing time. Clapp highlights this by citing Abraham Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural Address where he describes the calamity of the soon-to-end Civil War.

"Both [North and South] read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The almighty has His own purposes."

The wisdom of this speech recognizes that when Christians are divided over an issue, that we often think that one side wins, and the other loses. This is often the case, but to a certain extent we both lose. There is still a great sense of loss. There is nothing that feels worse than fighting each other. Sometimes it feels good to get in the last word, the last laught, to humiliate what you disagree with, to feel a sense of self-righteousness, but when it comes at the cost of your brother or alienating another human being, it feels terrible.

The other piece of wisdom that I really appreciate from this piece is that the culture war really is a fog. It is overwhelming. It is difficult to see issues clearly. We may not get to see the truth until a century or so from now. And as much as I don't like that, I'm still called to be present in this place "now" and that I'm called to be a Christian "now." This doesn't meant shrink away from the world, but it does mean being active in the Church.

And secondly, another really interesting body of work to come out is by James Davidson Hunter, who was the Sociologist who invented the term "culture wars" over 20 years ago. In his new book entitled "To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World" (Oxford: 2010), Hunter gives an overview of how Christians see Culture and Cultural Change. See short summaries of his chapters here. Here is a great article about if from Christianity Today. He identifies that the Christian Left often mirrors the politicized actions of the Christian Right but over a different set of values. As much as I sympathize with the Christian Left, I can't disagree with Hunter's argument.

Hunter also gives an interesting critique on folks like John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas in their affirmation of what Hunter calls "neo-anabaptist" models because eventhough it rejects Constantinianism and attempts to get back to a "mythic" "authentic" New Testament model of Christianity that such an argument is built on what it rejects. I need to learn more on this.

What Hunter offers instead is a "faithful presence." I'm not sure if I am interpreting this correctly, but I think this gets to the bottom of what my heart yearns for. Faithful presence does not mean "don't get involved," but it means to act Christian in whatever situation you are in. I think what speaks powerfully to me is that it means to act with compassion and grace toward oppressors in addition to the oppressed. It would require me to think compassionately about Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter as much as I think with compassion toward the poor and the oppressed. And I guess it begs the question of whether you can actually be simultaneously compassionate toward all.

Another quick note of something I appreciate tremendously about Hunter is that he expands the definitions of culture. I both enjoyed some things and found myself really frustrated by Andy Crouch's "Culture Making," but I think Hunter spells out for me why I felt so ambivalent. Crouch defined culture primarily as an artifact. He kept talking about what we could learn from an artifact (his example was an omelete) to tell us about culture. Given that I had never had an omelete until I got to college, I felt like crying foul because there was never a question of what made the omelete "normal" for America. I'm American, my family has been here since 1619 and none of my family members had ever had an omelete. Where we are from, you scramble your eggs. I know that he was just trying to give an general yet interesting example, but to me it revealed the limitations of his definition of culture and therefore his advocacy of it. There are systemic issues involved in culture. And this has huge implications for issues of race, ethnicity and even regionalism. Sometimes culture is what we assume. In the words of Hunter, "culture is also infrastructure" (Christianity Today Article, pg. 2).

I think the other problem I had with the culture as artifact argument is that it doesn't really allow folks to question negative aspects of culture. For instance, the goodness of the convenience and amazing power of the iphone does not get into ethical questions about American consumerism, accessibility of such a fantastic product to all people rather than just rich people, labor issues, the company's business practices and political associations. All of those things are assumed. It is assumed because a strong part of American culture is capitalism. The culture is like water to a fish--you don't realize the things that are inherent and therefore most desriptive about a culture until you get into a different environment.

On the Culture Wars

Not a day goes by, especially in the summer, that I do not get overwhelmed and distracted by the culture wars.

Overwhelmed for a couple of reasons: 1) The "hot button" issues of the culture wars involve a collision of really intimate, almost private issues and a public component about various rights. Take abortion and birth control. This is a very personal issue about sexuality, pregnancy and creating life. It also involves issues of rights of mothers, a history of male coersion and a future of absentee dad-ism, issues of poverty and the questions about where life begins and how to respond to it. Perhaps you don't like my spelling out of the issues I see at play over the abortion/birth control debate, but regardless what makes this issues so overwhelming is that there are very real private and public dimensions to them.

2) There is a feeling that there is such a "divide" in the world over these cultural issues that one has to figure out what they believe. Given the often cyclical nature of various values, meaning that taking a stance on one issue often makes one have to make a statement on a seemingly non-related issue and things get messy. For instance, there is a slippery slope over the issue of "pro-life" when it comes to things such as the death penalty. So to recap that one, having to make up your mind and having to consider and sort through other issues is simply overwhelming.

3) Communication (and community) becomes incredibly hard. It is so difficult to have conversations with people who have a set of beliefs that is so different from your own. Very often we want to "win" the argument and we never really get a chance to hear the real and genuine concerns that another person may have. Therefore, feeling like you can never be heard and to also never really hear from and connect with another human is exhausting.

And finally, the culture wars are overwhelming and incredibly distracting for the Church. It divides us into so many factions that we simply stop being Christians to one another and to others.

I do not think that I will be able to really get my mind around what I think and how I will react about all of the different culture war battles and the latest skirmishes and flare-ups, but I did find some interesting food for thought today which I will share in my next post.