Sheesh, American culture. I am not sure that I know what that means any more. In many ways, I do not recognize the country that surrounds me today. Gone are some less just or democratic ideas - like the apartheid I lived with as a child or the assumption that date rape was manly that I encountered as a young adult - but also gone are some features of public life that I thought were our strengths - like journalistic effort toward seeing a big picture, public service as actual service, statesmanship as an art rather than a game.
I believe that our culture is not now formed by the preferences of the people but by the extreme form of capitalism that has developed over the past fifty years under the guise of “free market” ideology. Thus, the church, as well as everything from school systems to health care to the press to entertainment, operates now in a “winner take all” mentality of competition and, thus, inequality. So, as long as we fail to place monetary value on the stuff of living - water, air, soil - and, as long as we spend the largest percentage of our energy budget on transportation, we will live in a distorted environment, socially and ecologically. The church participates in this distortion, as do we all.
Thus, the church is one entity that currently survives in the milieu of an American capitalism that overrules all other cultural values. It is not clear to me how long or how comfortable that survival will be.
The church’s mission is thus to speak truth to power. Instead of allowing powerful interests to distract us with divisive causes, the church’s place is to remain centered in its proclamation of love towards others and self. Instead of encouraging cultural degradation in the form of polarizing rhetoric, it’s time to be simple and direct and unmoving in the service of love towards others and self.
Yes, issues like abortion, gay rights, immigration, and gun control are important. What, however, are the central issues of our cultural dilemma right now? Civil behavior. Courage. Refusing to support hate. Multiculturalism. Economic justice. These are religious, not secular, values. This is where the discussion needs to be. As long as the church allows itself to be caught up in silly, outmoded, undisciplined, ‘liberal’ versus ‘conservative’ ideological divisions, it will remain irrelevant to daily life and it will continue to be manipulated by cynical financial (need I say secular) power.
If the church truly wants to confront creeping secularism, it will live, embrace, embody its core message: love towards others and self. Love demands greater income equality, not less. Love demands universal access to health care, no? Care for those unable to care for themselves, no? Justice is not optional. But the church seems to view these issues as secular concerns, at least in their public face. If it continues to step away from religious values like speaking truth and social responsibility, it will remain as many tidy social clubs of well-meaning, nice people who assume that the actual practice of God’s message of love is, uh, too secular. As I said, sheesh. Give us some hope. Champion the underdog. Give up dreams of political domination.
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