Copy crapped out onto today's headlines!
Posted on 01/18/2015 12:20:53 PM PST by grey_whiskers
The United States started out mainly Protestant -- however due to the schisms in Western Europe, with a strong bent towards religious tolerance of other denominations.
Coupled with this, the American War of Independence gave a strong bent to non-hierarchical thinking...therefore a suspicion of stratified, formalized churches (primarily Catholic) as Orthodox churches were concentrated in Russia and Eastern Europe and demographically underrepresented among the settlers.
Coupled with this, historical ignorance (America as a “melting pot” formed explicitly upon socio-political theory rather than accidents of blood, war, and geography) coupled with dependence upon breakaway denominations (Lutheran, Calvinist, Evangelical) led to a reliance on “Sola Scriptura” / “priesthood of *all* believers” (sold as “not being told by a Pope how to think but in fact often replaced by what the denominational leaders or individual congregation’s pastors thought, coupled with “fads” akin to management fads in today’s big businesses), as well as a rejection of both iconography AND Church teachings -- emphasizing Jesus’ teaching on “woe to you Pharisees, teaching as commandments the traditions of men” while neglecting 2 Timothy 2:2 "You have heard me teach in front of many witnesses. Pass on to men you can trust the things you've heard me say. Then they will be able to teach others" also and interpreting John 16:13 as being individual, not corporate.
These were empahsized by / coupled with “Great Awakening” in the 1700s, and Evangelical / Pentecostal / Charismatic movements in the mid- to late- 20th century.
America has a history of pluralism and no tradition of “fusion of church and state” (so no Emperor Constantine, Holy Roman Empire, Henry VIII); further, no experience with monarchy or empire; being a Republic from the beginning. Therefore, in the United States, there is no organic, homegrown history of persecution to the point of death over one creed or another. It’s not in our cultural DNA.
However, America was founded by Christians, mostly Protestants, *for* Christians. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton were all founded as divinity schools. Jonathan Edwards, the preacher famous for this “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God” sermon, graduated first in his class fromYale...graduating at age 17. Because of this, Christians were used to not *dominating* the political / social culture; but *being* the culture. It is also important to note, that if the dominance is great enough, even those who are non-believers have to “toe the line” -- for example, sexual immorality, divorce, working on Sunday, and the like.
Over time, especially since the 1960s, there has been a concerted effort to remove Christianity as the center of American life; which effort has largely succeeded. The mass press (movies, books, TV in general) is anything *but* Christian; it has been replaced by a splintering of factors from hedonism to feminism to shock. At the same time, the body politic has moved farther left, for many reasons; with the result that the laws no longer reflect the world view of the Christians; and the common culture has shifted to the point that traditional morality, taken for granted even 50 years ago, is seen as constricting at best, and as “hate crimes” (which term was seemingly newly-minted for persecution) at worst.
This shift in the culture is uneven geographically: the worst on the ocean coasts, to a lesser extent in the great plains, the least in the deep south (“the Bible Belt”). It is also much more pronounced in large cities.
A lot of the reaction of the “conservative states” is that since, locally, the culture is still dominated by the Christian worldview, the people there cannot wrap their *feelings* around the fact that there has been a division; this has been exacerbated by the movement to consolidate power in Washington, and away from local authority; and of course as a bureaucracy, “one size fits all” is the name of the game: and such often reverts to the “lowest common denominator” -- even aside from any socialist-inspired tendencies to aim at placating the masses (bread and circuses) with money taken from those who work and produce.
This shock comes across as “close-mindedness” or “intolerance” -- it is in fact a delicate balance between wanting to preserve the status quo, and recognizing the conflicts between “tolerance” in the sense of not initiating pogroms with literal killing as seen in the Old World, and tolerance as defined by:
“tolerance” in the sense of “I don’t approve, but I still have the right through peer pressure and voting for my beliefs” to express my disapproval of your lifestyle
“tolerance” in the sense of “expressing my beliefs offends you and I am required to keep *my* mouth shut, even though your actions offend *my* conscience”
“tolerance” in the sense of “I am no longer allowed to either voice or practice my beliefs, and am required to mouth insincere approval of things I object to, or to violate my conscience to allow them in what should be my right of free association, or to have my money taken by threat of force via taxes and used to fund things which I find objectionable”
The other element is that since traditional beliefs are now only held by a plurality of the population, and laws in the U.S. are somewhat determined by ballot, there exists the moral conflict of how to accommodate radically opposing views short of violence, without forcing *anyone* to violate their conscience. Those who were used to being in the center of the bell curve, who now find that *they* are the outcasts, are not in their mind trying to “control” other people, merely to restore the cultural settings that they felt were “self-evident” all belong.
It is necessary to interrupt for a moment to point out something about morality and culture. When one speaks of “Christianity” one may refer either to an individual’s belief in Christ; or to the theology or culture of a group of Christians; or yet again to the penumbra or prevailing culture of a region or country in which Christians are dominant.
There may be great differences between on Christian country and another, due to geography, past interactions with other cultures, wars, and the like; consider how Protestant New England differs for example from Catholic Ireland, or from Catholic Spain, or Orthodox Russia, or Orthodox Greece. Further, the character of a country, the overall culture, may be quite different depending both on the number of Christians in the country, and the amount of cultural influence which they have: many of the classical Romans preferred Christian wives due to the reputation of said wives for sexual fidelity; but the overall level of promiscuity and sexual sin in the Roman empire, among those who were not practicing Christians, was not curtailed. And with the development of multiple Christian sects, and the tendency for faith to be imposed from above (Napoleon at one point, was crowned by the Pope; consider the Catholic/Protestant blood feuds in France and England, or the wars between Orthodox and Catholic in the Balkans), often each group of Christians would vie for power, either to have a member of their sect marry into / usurp / seize political power, or to convert an existing monarch to their creed. “To the victor belong the spoils.”
With that being said, consider the position of the Christians and their influence in the culture within the United States. Contrary to the views of the liberals, there is no such thing as “separation of Church and State” in the way the ACLU portrays it; rather the Constitution guarantees freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion. The state cannot unilaterally impose a creed upon citizens, nor persecute citizens for exercising their conscience. However, this does not mean that religion has no role, still less does it mean, that religion has no influence in public affairs! The influence may take shape in several forms: first, if a majority of the population, especially the voting population, as well as the candidates, hold the same cultural norms, influenced by Christianity, then laws reflecting a Christian worldview, and morality, will tend to be enacted, and the overwhelming majority of the culture will agree. Examples of this from the past would include the so-called “blue laws” in which businesses were required to close on Sunday, in order to honor the Sabbath. Second, there is cultural uniformity: despite the “melting pot” with waves of immigrants, particularly from Northern Europe, which was still heavily Christian (say, Irish and German), while there may have been differences in ritual observances of religion, still, the cultural mores (marriage as the only legitimate outlet for sex, divorce to be granted only as a last resort, charity and almsgiving, insistence on providing for oneself and one’s family rather than relying upon the state, and the like), were pretty much in common. Third, the influence of the mass of Christians, upon the body politic as well as the larger culture, meant that those seeking to resist the common mores had an uphill climb: there were no significant subcultures which differed on common morality; in addition, even if people privately disagreed with the moral strictures of Christianity, they were forced to pay lip service to the ideals in public pronouncements, as well as to pretend in their public behavior, that they agreed with the ideals -- politicians as well as sports stars as well as entertainers might have affairs, but these were to be carefully hushed up or lied about; witness the time Babe Ruth was unable to play baseball because of complications of a sexually transmitted infection; the cover story bandied about on the radio was that he had a tummy-ache from eating too many hot-dogs.
However, with the aggressive secularization of the United States which began in the 1950s, and has accelerated since then, a number of things have happened. First, the cultural consensus about Christian morality was first weakened, then actually reversed: instead of the promiscuous hiding their status, it is virgins who are shamed. Second, in keeping with this, the laws have been changing -- not merely as a reflection of the mass culture, but often “ahead” of the cultural consensus. The Christians, instead of being at the center of the bell curve, a majority in number and in influence, are instead all over the map: in some states they are a majority in number, in others, a weak plurality, and in others, a definite minority. However, due to both the presence of electronic media, which increases the visibility of different parts of the country to each other, and the “megaphone effect” -- for mass media acts as a force multiplier on the influence of whichever cultural mores it emphasizes, and due to the increasing nationalization of laws, whereby dicta are sent out from DC to override the will of people on the local level -- even in those states in which Christians are still a majority, they are felt that their will and desires, in law as well as in popular culture, is being overridden or ignored.
And a lot of the attitude of -- “close mindedness” as it were, is not necessarily that of bigotry, or backwardness -- but simply of people who grew up steeped in the idea that their views were reflective of the center of culture, and comfortable expressing those views, knowing that they would be understood and accepted, but who now find that, without overt moves on their part, behind their back, things which they have known and felt all along are suddenly derided, and they themselves subject to scorn and ridicule for holding the same views which they always have. And they do not know how to react -- either emotionally, politically, or morally -- when they are called suddenly to accept things which, within their memory, have always been held “by everyone” to be immoral.
Two other points here, which tie into the American system -- “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
First, there is a difference between private morality and public morality: while it still held true that the country’s culture was Christian-dominated, there was no need to distinguish between private and public spheres, since the behavior and attitudes expected in the one were the same as those expected in the other. But when the fracturing occurs, it turns out that it is asymmetrical: that is, it is one thing to “turn the other way” when someone is doing something you consider immoral -- you might want to tell them of your disapproval, or consider it your moral duty to warn them; but what happens when the social mores are inverted, where traditional morality is not only ignored by others, but actively discouraged, or mocked? Why is it that even “speaking up and making one’s voice heard” is only allowed for the detractors from morality, not its defenders (consider the recent flap over Duck Dynasty: the actual controversial remarks did not call for any kind of persecution or attacks, merely expressing disagreement).
Second, what happens when the laws are put in place which require you to step on your own conscience for the sake of another’s immorality (e.g. being *required* to rent to people “living in sin” or being *required* to buy insurance which provides for contraception or abortion)? What happened to “freedom of conscience?” The United States has long been free from sectarian violence, partly because of the safety valve of freedom of conscience; but it is beginning to appear that those who wish to reject Christian cultural morality not only wish to be allowed to pursue their lifestyle with the approval of the laws, but by the enforced lip-service of those who explicitly disagree with their lifestyle, under penalty not only of estrangement, but of law. Not only is Babe Ruth freed from the fiction of eating hot dogs, but his sexual dalliances are celebrated. In your face! The pinch of incense to Caesar, seems to be returning with a vengeance; and all the talk of “the rights of the minority” seem to be at risk of being overturned -- not in order to prevent actual violence, as has so often been the case in the rest of the world, and not over matters as weighty as the salvation of souls, but merely as a salve to people’s *feelings*; and over sex, which apparently is supposed to be no big deal at all.
Copy crapped out onto today's headlines!
Bookmarked for later reading.
Excellent overview of the cultural and Constitutional crisis in America today. Thanks for posting this.
The marriage of media and education will turn most into ignorant heathens and will likely result in the failure of our great experiment. We will wind up with the government we deserve for as Wm. Penn said, “Those who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.”
Thanks gw. Of course, during WWII, FDR told a visiting cardinal and rabbi that the US was a Protestant nation, and that Catholics and Jews were here “by suffrance”.
Interesting observations, g_w.
Way behind again, and never going to catch up Ping.
Thank you for a thoughtful essay, grey_whiskers.
This is where America is now.
“... The pinch of incense to Caesar...”
This is what the early Christians refused to do, offer incense to Caesar I.e. acknowledge him as god.
This is what the early Christians refused to do, offer incense to Caesar I.e. acknowledge him as god.
Yes, but it appears that there are more and more who seek to reinstate the homage, with umbrage on their part.
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