The necessity of Christian culture

The Founders of the Republic would have had words to describe the observance of rituals and saints' days, but Christian would hardly have been among them.

I think there is a *lot* of truth to a "community of practice" - when playing piano (or any instrument, I imagine), you are creating "finger memory" to play the piece, and all the practice makes one a better player because the physicality of repetitions builds into your being. Same with muscle memory in those who work out. So I totally get repetitious actions being a brilliant undergirding for "more" being built on top of that. Also, we succumb to the ups and downs of mood, and being faithful in actions even when down will help to draw us out of a slump and back into bright periods. Somehow we expect practice/training/repetition to excel in music or sports, but not as Christians - why is that?

One of the things that I've noticed the most is how life has changed on the Christian Sabbath. When I was a kid, there wasn't much to do but go to church and spend the rest of the day with family. It's always been hard for Jews to participate in American life and honor the Jewish Sabbath(Friday evening to Saturday evening) , but Sunday could always be counted on as a day of quiet.

We take our kids to Jewish religious school every Sunday morning from 10:00am-12:30pm. They've missed baseball practices, soccer games, birthday parties of Christian kids......you name it. It's like no time in this culture is reserved for the Sacred. And what's really a shame is that my children seem to be the only ones missing these activities, and they're the only Jews in the bunch. The rest are all Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Protestant kids.

American mother's day, like so much of the 'protesting' zeal that Charles Cosimano aludes to, is a secular re-invention of the Roman Catholic traditional practice of sending domestics home to celebrate Easter with their family earlier in the Lenten season, on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laetare_Sunday so that they would be back in service at Court for the high holy days.

They still celebrate Mothering Sunday the Catholic way in the UK (and I forget every year and will have to call next weekend to apologize profusely for overlooking thanking my mum for giving birth to me).

Meanwhile I love all things Mardi Gras. Their humble folk profanity so well marks us as the chalk to Christ's cheese - one of my treasured possessions is a German artisanal woodcarved puppet made in the style of a medieval jester that I purchased in the depths of some Black Forest village during a Fassenachts parade modelled on the costumes of revellers such as these:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/174/439631310_ebfb34cfe4.jpg?v=0

No, not some pagan throw back, honestly!

The bells are a modern concession to the cheap and cheerful convenenience of mass production (somewhat like the May Day costumes of merry old English Morris Dancers in honor of Our Lady) symbolizing the what in the dark ages were rattles fashioned out of hollowed-out gourds or inflated animal gizzards to represent Paul's penitential admonition of 1 Corinthians 13 so fitting to the lay rituals of the Ash Wednesday Eve:

"If I speak in human and angelic tongues

but do not have love,

I am as a resounding gong

or a clashing cymbal."

How much of our daily discourse elevates itself above a carneval clang, a circus cacophany? These folk traditions have lost their power not because we're post-Christian (who needs Heaven when we can make it ourselves) but because rather, as Benedict warned when he was still Joseph Ratzinger, we have lost our sense of sin.

Hubris blinds us to our fallenness. Augustine is the man for the times...

There should be fruitful ways to both withdraw to a certain extent from the general mainstream culture and also be a witness to it.

A bit like being innocent as doves and wise as serpents, perhaps?

God Bless to all

We take our kids to Jewish religious school every Sunday morning from 10:00am-12:30pm. They've missed baseball practices, soccer games, birthday parties of Christian kids......you name it. It's like no time in this culture is reserved for the Sacred. And what's really a shame is that my children seem to be the only ones missing these activities, and they're the only Jews in the bunch. The rest are all Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Protestant kids.

Excellent point, Watsy. There's no better example of how American culture has been taken over by commerce than this quiet revolution that has taken place in just a generation or so.

Incidentally, Pope John Paul II made a big theme of his papacy the need for Catholics to return to living Sundays as the Lord's Day, rather than misusing it as a day to buy groceries, watch 6 hours of sports on TV, or coach the kids' soccer games. Benedict XVI also made Sundays the subject of one of his first talks as Pope, citing the attitude of the early Christian martyrs who said, "We cannot live without Sunday." But they are really pushing against the grain.

The uniqueness of Sunday is at the core of any Christian culture. The French Revolutionary tyrants knew what they were doing when they abolished the seven day week in order to erase Sunday observance.

Mother's Day, like many other such "holidays", are inventions by marketers. Some people call them "Hallmark holidays" in recognition of the steep spike in revenues enjoyed by greeting card makers, florists and singing telegram delivery people.

It has long since become embedded in our capitalistic culture, and money will always be stronger than faith. Try to imagine the NFL moving the Super Bowl to any other day but Sunday without there first being a catastrophic dip in its TV ratings.

it is less urgent to convince the alternative culture in which we live of the truth of Christ than it is for the Church to tell itself its own story and to nurture its own life, the culture of the city of God, the Christian republic.

This is putting the cart before the horse in the worst way. Absent the conviction of the truth of Christ, any cultural transformation is sure to be nothing more than a hollow shell. Where is the scriptural foundation for this inversion of biblical priorities? Last I read were were called to go and make disciples of all nations (literally, all people groups). That is the primary task. Transform human hearts with the love of Christ and transformation of the culture will follow.

Franklin, I have observed that the primary complaint about culture from religionists is that the culture is "anti-" the religion.

I'm not sure if I'm a "religionist" but I do agree from a scientific point of view that our culture is certainly the "anti-religion" since religion provides us with a framework for living out virtue together for the betterment of the culture.

Why? Modern culture is the cult of self, and it is indeed dying quite rapidly, as would be expected. Just look at the metrics; it's collapsing at the rate of the Black Death. We should expect nothing less.

current and upcoming (children) followers will be snatched away from the faith, that their faith cannot be strong enough qua faith to "protect" them from being snatched.

I think parents who are concerned here aren't really living out a real culture themselves - that is, they are merely trying to avoid the broader culture's ills while reaping the benefits. Iow, they try to leave the culture, but don't replace it with anything.

But for those who choose to step out, I don't see a problem with returns. Sheese, what sane person would choose this society over a real culture? I think the Amish, who don't exactly have an ideal culture and live pretty lean, lose only about 1 out of 10 or so. Our culture is indeed that bad.

But it is a big deal for those who leave to decide exactly how much to mix it up with the broader culture. This is the big question for Christians who are pulling the Benedict Option, and what I see as Rod's point.

From your response, I believe I can clarify my point: it is true that culture can be in conflict with religion, and vice versa. I'm trying to get my mental hands around the attitude that a religionist will reject culture instead of partaking of it to the extent that it either does not conflict, or that a workable compromise can be found. I believe that the Amish are a case in point.

Better, the Great Unspeakable in reactionary American religion: the Quakers.

Franklin, I would call myself a religionist, I think. But then again, I think everyone would be, eh?

I would point out that from what we know of human history, the oldest humans we have a decent read on (say 50,000 yo, when we left Africa) had religion and culture side by side. And every culture that has existed since has had religion. I don't think culture can exist long without it.

In fact, I would argue modernity or secularism is itself a religion (merely a failing one) and it would have failed long ago without sucking the life out of the life breathed into it by other religions on the way. Modernity is the first parasitic religion, so it is an "anti-religion" and religionists should fear it.

Mdavid, we are in basic agreement, so I don't want to get bogged down in details. My main point is that when religion becomes the culture, that is the deathknell of both. Since it can be either a catastrophic fall (pagan Rome comes to mind) or a gradual decline, as we seem to be seeing in the US and elsewhere, I submit that Jillian has an important perspective as well.

Anyway, we don't know much beyond the practices of those ancients. Did they have culture vs. religion conflicts? Did they even make any sort of rational distinction that could validly be compared in that fashion? Further, our nearest pagan predecessors for whom we have any sort of reliable data gave us a significant part of our cultural heritage. They valued honor, sacrifice and service to community. Besides Aristotle and Plato, they also gave us Cicero. The Achaean League was as important to the founders as the Magna Carta. We have (some would add arguably) improved on their thoughts and ideas, to be sure. Monotheistic faiths and those they inspired have given us much as well.

In the end, though, I offer you a different sort of comparison: if the then prevalent Christian ideals had held sway after the Revolution, and become embedded in our culture and laws, I have serious doubts that the US would have participated in the Industrial Revolution, let alone becoming its driving force for so long. It is the strict adherence to established precepts that stifles; it is rebellion against the strict that creates new things. I speculate that the stifling effect of institutionalized religion was a primary concern of the founders, and by itself an excellent reason for freedom of religion, the complete prohibition of state-sponsored religion and the explicit rejection of religious tests for public office.

"My main point is that when religion becomes the culture, that is the deathknell of both."

This may or may not be true, but in any case this is not what's happening in Western culture. What's happening is that for a number of reasons the religion upon which the culture was founded is ceasing to inform it. Modernism, due to a combination of a purely materialist view and its haste to remake things accordingly, can't tell the difference between the pillars that are weight-bearing and those that are merely decorative, and is striving to remove them all.

"In fact, I would argue modernity or secularism is itself a religion (merely a failing one) and it would have failed long ago without sucking the life out of the life breathed into it by other religions on the way."

Absolutely true. Western secularism is living on Christendom's moral capital. This cannot continue forever. As Nietzsche asked, why, if Christianity is false, should we continue to follow its morality? Yet, not many people are attracted to sheer nihilism. Therefore, modernity will continue to live in the cognitive dissonance that posits the following of some vestige of traditional morality without transcendence. Nietzsche, from one side, and Dostoevsky, from the other, both realized that in the long run this couldn't possibly work. Today's modernists would do well to pay attention.

"Yes, there are religions that are compatible with Modernity. They claim what authority they do over and within human consciousness alone."

Thus making that authority and any morality flowing from it completely arbitrary, and leading inevitably to one of two things: anarchy or totalitarianism.

"I do mean to submit that if Christianity was the founder of civilization, it failed to fulfill its ongoing responsibility to maintain it."

I would submit that something else was at work, namely the conscious jettisoning of Christianity, not in one fell swoop but in stages. In brief, the transcendence underlying the morality was dumped, as it was thought that the morality could be maintained without it. This was not the case, however, and now the morality itself is on its way out.

This is not to say that some fault does not belong to Christians and the Church itself, at least in its human aspect, for failing to respond, responding to the challenge too late, etc. But to take the Bishop Spong approach -- "Christianity must change with the times or die" -- is frightfully wrongheaded, and in fact, it can be argued that it is precisely this attitude that has resulted in the faith's marginalization.

I must be asleep. That link should read: Brighid to Saint Brigid as an example. It doesn't matter...

"Yeah, the likes of Zen Buddhism and Quakerism are notorious for the dictatorships they've spawned. And empires they've sent hurtling into the abyss."

I wonder how long either would last defending itself against a non-Zen, non-Quaker dictator with a sizable army? In case you hadn't figured this out yet, Jillian, there are always people who either A) won't play by the rules or B) would rather make up their own than obey someone else's.

"Modernity will take care of the problems you propose in the long run."

If the 20th century is any indication, I see nothing which induces me to be so sanguine about any 'run,' short or long.

As far as your three options are concerned, I notice that you spin each of them in a rather negative direction, as a species of wishful thinking on your part, no doubt. Actually, I think that a combination of #1 and #2 is probably what will happen, but I would recast both more positively. #1 is simply a manifestation of 'ecclesia reformata est semper reformanda,' a Protestant slogan, but one which well befits the whole of Christianity. #2, while I wouldn't call it 'stalling in place,' means that there is an irreducible nub to the faith that is unchangeable, and that people, by and large, are going to reject that nub. "If they hated Me, they will also hate you" and all that.

Be that as it may, I still have yet to see how a purely and solely human-derived morality can be anything more than a sheer exercise in arbitrariness. The ethicist who to my mind comes closest to demonstrating how such a thing could exist is John Kekes, yet even he is unable to demonstrate why certain behaviors should be called 'good' and others 'bad,' even though they are almost universally agreed upon. If there is no standard beyond us as to the 'good,' by what standard do we judge what we perceive as good?

"It's a little difficult to create a totalitarian regime that is a great threat to others when nationalism, tribalism, religionism, etc. strike people as problems and obsolete ideologies rather than virtues."

Nonsense. The totalitarian urge is always present in one form or another. If the things mentioned cannot function as tools for it, the would-be totalitarian will always manage to find something that will, even if it has a nice name like 'diversity,' or 'tolerance' or 'compassion.' As Flannery O'Connor said, tenderness without the source of tenderness will lead to the gas chambers.