Are we any less governable as a county than 1790? Than 1860? Than 1875? Than 1930? Than 1970? Than 1996?

Oh.. and I don’t think the early church was persecuted because they were confronting “worldly sin”. . . ? Were they?
It seems that most of their persecution was either because 1) they were considered blasphemous by the Jewish leaders or 2) because they would not acknowledge Caesar as God.
It seems we’re not really faced with either of those threats in America right now — and those Christians who are persecuted today are largely persecuted because their beliefs threaten totalitarian and/or fascist governments (like Rome before) or are considered blasphemous to other religions (e.g. Muslims today).

Are we ungovernable? Sadly yes. Much of the ability to control – which is a different matter than have influence – is now the subject of forces larger than Washington, or the state capitals. As well, the factions that exist within are at such odds that the only thing holding this country in place is the social contract – Locke and Hobbes brought into the 21st Century – which itself shifts, albeit slowly and without apparent direction – though clearly without direction from the church. Hauerwas spoke to this recently in his posting over at the Religion & Ethics website and offers up an alternative view to Dalrymple’s desire for the church to be church in America.

It seems that while we have always been a rebellious lot we still held to the concept that we are a part of a larger community. In a pinch we would all pull together to achieve a goal. Our governing class, on the other hand . . .. It appears today we are turning into a collection of special interests with each one out for themselves first. Naturally, Christians are not to live like this but we often do.

I think this author does a lot of good in trying to confront consumerism, and in pointing out the ways that we have become unable to speak prophetically into the culture.
Sadly, I am less sure that his message will necessarily do much of anything. Not that we all couldn’t use another reminder to imitate Christ. As he points out, the church needs them all the time. Indeed, the call to sacrifice is one too easily avoided, in my own life especially.
But perhaps in an effort to avoid a “transparently political message” or to not take sides, or for whatever reason, this concept of sacrifice remains vague and undefined. The net result, it seems to me, will be that people will read into it all the things they are already doing in imitation of Christ, and interpret this message as simply an encouragement to do them with an extra “oomph”, because the witness of the church and the fate of the nation rides upon them. In other words, this article could be said to “raise the stakes” without challenging readers with anything different.
Of course, that may be a bit harsh: the author connects consumerism to political governance in a way that might be challenging to some Christians who like to blame “secular elites” for the country’s woes. This may be a helpful way of removing the plank from our own eye before attending to the speck in the other’s.
But what does sacrifice look like in the context of consumerism? If that is the one of the main problems, than why not articulate the gospel message of simplicity? What are the sacrificial practices of a subversive, anti-idolatry Church in reference to the idol of consumerism? What are illuminating examples of Jesus-followers who today are faithfully imitating Christ in this area?
The tricky business here, I think, is that the author implicitly knows that providing specific examples will, inevitably, lead to accusations of “politicizing” the gospel, either from the right or the left. Critiques of consumerism are always a bit too close to critiques of our economic system itself for anyone to get away with fleshing out a critique too much. In that, I sympathize with the author; and it brings up the larger and much more difficult question of how to relate theology and faith with political ideas and theory. How do we relate the two so that churches don’t become propaganda centers for certain political parties and also so that politics can have its own tradition and discipline?

We are absolutely governable. Our military can keep us protected. Our local police forces can keep us safe.
In other respects, we cannot be governed. Most are motivated by personal interest. Insofar as people are willing to sublimate personal interest, it is not for the sake of government.
When government begins to impinge upon issues that go beyond protecting basic rights, the governed seek to get the largest slice of the pie. Government is a means to the end, and not vice versa.
In that sense, we are not governable. We cannot have a strongly centralized government and hope that it does not become exploitative.
It is reasonable to suggest that we have crossed a certain threshold, that our addiction to government solutions is ingrained. Government will be elected not on it’s ability to preserve the nation, but to sufficiently bribe more than half the populace into acquiescence. If this is your perspective, then you must conclude we cannot be governed.
By my lights, this is the brilliance of our Republic of states. Individually, we are not subject to the whim of the coalition of the bribed, and we can generate by leveraging the balance of powers.

We’re living in a time of upheaval, not much different than the Age of Gutenberg (or more technically, the fallout from technological advance of mass media). The revolution in mass communications, namely the internet means information, thoughts, video, pictures, opinions from all over the planet are available at the click of a mouse (or finger tap). While it was romanticized that such free flow of data would liberate the world, it’s also exponentially powered propaganda and group think.
For most of history, man has divvied himself up by family/tribe, and then by the nation state. In a world globally connected, the “nation state” is transcended, yet many still desire to navigate by the old map. From a Gaussian model to a Mandelbrotian model. And they react angrily at a world that no longer makes sense to industrial era sentiment.
Although a major catastrophe or epic event like depletion of fossil fuels could return us to the family / tribe / nascent nation state mode again?

@5 Tom,
Great comments. I know this might seem like a waste of a post, but attaching this comment with the original post is very helpful.
However, I would like to see you respond with several examples that would allow the church to more “imitate Christ” and undermine the “idol of consumerism”?

I concur with Kenny (#1). We are no more ungovernable than in other years, including 1857-1860, the precursor to the Civil War and 1865-1888, when the military ran the South. We are no more ungovernable than under confederation or from 1787-1840, when there were no stable political parties. Christians might remember how much their ancestors decried political parties as they came to power — because people would be loyal to party over God and Christian principals.
Primarily, I believe that it may be our current two-party system that is unsustainable. I believe that a percentage of the Tea Partyers could have been Obama supporters if he had taken a populist line against banks and bailouts early in his administration. The problems that the Tea Partyers are upset about recall the immigration issues of the 1830s-1840s and 1880s-1920s, the lynchings that were common in the South from 1880-1940, and the anti-corporate movements to the left and right of Roosevelt in the 1930s.
Right now I am torn between longing for a populist leader on the left and fearing the demogoguery that any populism is open to.
Peace,
Randy Gabrielse

Wow, that is intense. I agree with what he says about the church. It’s a hard pill to swallow and of course not to be taken as a blanket statement, but I for one am convicted of my own contribution to what’s become of us. May God have mercy and redirect our paths. Let us look to Him and become more like Him, rejecting the image of the world for the precious image of Christ.

When I was a first grader in the pre-PC 1960s, we were told the story of how the silly Indians sold Manhattan to the Europeans for $24 worth of clocks and glass bead necklaces. I have often thought of that story in the past 15 years as we have closed down factories in exchange for a pile of cheap microwaves, window air conditioners, clothes and lawn furniture from China. So I agree, we’re caught in consumerism, trading our birthrights for baubles.
#6, kevin–our military can not keep us protected. That’s putting faith in an idol. From what I read in the paper yesterday, China is targeted to become the #1 economy in 20 years. They have the factories, the infrastructure (or are developing it) and a billion more people than we do. We’re going to have to rely more than ever on the power Jesus preached and modeled: forgiveness, love, sacrifice, obedience to God–for if China becomes ascendant, military power won’t save us.

The United States had moved from a position of aggressive pursuit of the common good to aggressive pursuit of the individual good. For a long time the pursuit of individual gain was concomitant with the national good, or close enough to it that it supported the national goal. However, the individual pursuit is no longer aligned due to the redefinition of the national interest. The national interest is now preservation of ruling class of our society and not provision of a place for all to succeed.
The Christian religion has become coopted in the pursuit of ruling class wealth and now truly is becoming an opiate of the masses. If we are to make a change then the ruling class has to change or religion needs to change. We are still a democracy but the people are ill informed as to what is advantageous to them because the ruling class dominates the airwaves and they are corrupt seeking self gratification. Again, this may not be different than it was at any time in the past, but the world is different and the self gratification of the ruling class is no longer in the interest of society as a whole.
The message of Jesus is a message that helps the society as a whole succeed and is not really oriented toward the aristocracy. But the coopting of the message has made it so people think Jesus was out for each of them to get the most they can (go to heaven or other selfish pursuit). The ruling class now believes the message of Jesus is either not for them or is aligned with their individual freedom. We are hosed unless things change.

Although interesting points are made in the article and in the comments, I see that you are all missing the most significant point in the problem of the Church of today: We should realize that we are in the period just preceding the rapture of the Church; therefore, as our Scripture tell us, Satan is walking among us trying to deceive all and he is doing a good job at that. God has blessed the US with so much especially since WWII (I was there), that we have taught our children that they should have everyTHING and they should be made happy with everyTHING. Added to that is the fact that Americans including evangelicals don’t both even teaching the children about heaven and hell anymore and that we have to make a deliberate choice. How many of us read our Bible anymore? How many of us pray daily for God’s guidance and mercy? How many of us think we can do it all ourselves — this is Satan’s way of turning us from God’s way.
Please Lord, have mercy on us all as we are indeed sinning daily.

@Diane
Our economy was going to move away from manufacturing regardless. I, for one, am glad it has.
“our military can not keep us protected. That’s putting faith in an idol”
No it isn’t. You are conflating differing definitions of protection.

Many thanks to Scot for posting this and to the commenters for their illuminating thoughts (Tom (#5) in particular, I must say).
As always, one should be careful interpreting a piece from snippets, and I think some of the concerns mentioned above are addressed in other portions of the article. I don’t doubt there have been other periods in which we have been ungovernable, or nearly so, but I fear that the collective moral vision that once gave the nation a common basis of appeal is now lacking. And I think that cultural renaissance begins with the church being the church, being the salt and light–and the church being the church begins with Christians walking faithfully.
I am actually trying to give a hopeful vision, to prevent Christians from simply complaining about society and believing that their own walk with Christ has nothing to do with it. Thus I finish the piece with an appeal that we should “let it start with us starting again with Christ.” We follow Christ because we love him, but when we follow Christ faithfully I do believe we have a leavening effect upon the society and culture around us.
Quickly, Kenny (#2), I actually do believe the early church was persecuted because it stood against worldly sins – including idolatry.
Again, thanks for the comments.

I also meant to say, since some asked for specifics, that this is the first in a series, where more specifics will be explored in the next installment (due on Thursday or Friday).

@Timothy
I guess it depends on what you mean by “stood against.” They refused to be idolaters themselves. They taught about the one true God. But they weren’t out protesting at the temples.

Tim makes a strong indictment of the church, I would submit that as commited believers we need to step out of our comfort zone. Pray then go; to work with disadvantaged youth or to rebuild in impoverished areas.
As we live out, with our children or members of youth groups, the harder parts of Christ’s instruction the youth involved in it will be drawn back to the church and to a deeper faith.
I agree it’s easy to feel powerless if you expect the government to solve the problem – it’s when we as individuals solve problems close to us that we have power.

For a take on the problems of consumerism from a totally different angle, I’d suggest “Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior” by Geoffrey Miller. Just about everyone can find something in it to agree with, and something to disagree with. (I know I did both.) But it’s quite thought-provoking, and might at least give an idea how others are tackling these issues…

As the race to the bottom continues, churches could support striking workers at a plant that was profitable last year and STILL wants to roll back wages and benefits:
See: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/business/18motts.html?hpw

It has a lot to do with whether the ‘church’ has been faithful to going to the highways and byways, to the forgotten, to the hungry, to the sick and the dying, to the poor and the homeless… there was a mandate for social justice and this keeps the church on the side of the poor; but has the church instead sided with Empire building, with the mechanizations of world power and aligned itself on side of the Beast, wanting riches and power rejecting the Cross, and rejecting the Jesus who healed the multitudes, and walked with the crowds. ‘Whatsoever you are doing to the least of these, you are doing to me” This side of the world view is about power, brokering not peace, but domination and for wealth – it has no time or desire to be useful to the poor (the aniwim) whom Jesus came into this world for.
Certainly to resist this, if it means to be seen as ungovernable, then so be it. Whether this in the context of secular government or the government of the church. Standing with the poor, the powerless, the wounded is to stand with Jesus and to carry the cross rather than be passive observer on the side of the road. Those who do feel cheated and powerless have a greater power than any which the secular governments can offer, and to be faithful to the Gospel means to welcome all of these and be in solidarity with oppressed, the exploited, the poor, the excluded, the voiceless. In this way we can walk with Jesus, we can be at his feet wiping them with our tears an stand at the foot of the cross with his mother.