A Living Text

Rosen summarizes Adorno’s view of America:

The picture of American life that Adorno gives in Minima Moralia is bleak indeed. The functionality of American architecture - the elimination of ornaments, window frames and garden fences - is characterized as mechanistic and dehumanizing; the directness of American manners insensitive and intrusive; and the cult of health and therapy fascistic. America was a haven from the barbarism of Europe, to be sure, and Adorno was grateful for that, but it was what America had in common with what he had fled from that most caught Adorno’s attention: the extension of industrialism to all areas of life and the corresponding alienation of the individual. 

Writing in 1995, James Jordan said:

Now there is a last curious fact. The Book of Acts likewise ends with this same quotation from Isaiah (Acts 28:25-28). Paul applies it to the stubborn and unbelieving Jews, and now tells them he is going to go to those very heathen that Psalms 115 and 135 were written about in the first place, and they will listen. A full circle has been made. This is the third application of these original Psalms to Israel. It has passed through Isaiah, to Jesus, to Paul. In each instance, there are some who are saved and others who are further hardened. This is now a three-fold hardening that has come upon Israel, and God is done with Israel.

Where are we in this cycle? America is surely at least two-fold hardened, and perhaps we are moving toward the third. About this I do not know. But what is clear is that, more than ever, America is Self-Intoxicated, and it is harder than ever to get any hearing for the Gospel. Any man who attempts evangelism with an Arminian theology is bound to be deeply disillusioned in the contemporary world. For men to be saved it is increasingly clear that a purely supernatural miracle is required so that the blind can see, the deaf hear, and the dumb sing for joy. And, it is clear that we are in danger of losing our Gospel privileges. In many places in the third world, the Gospel is heard with great joy. Romans 11:7-8 is very liable to become our legacy:

What then? Israel failed to obtain what it sought. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that should not see and ears that should not hear, down to this very day.”

Scott Richert has an excellent series going over at Chronicles on Christians in the American nation. He writes:

There is no doubt that the idea of America as a credal nation has been used to great advantage by men from Lincoln to George W. Bush. And the fact of multiethnic immigration to the United States (pre-1965, let alone post-) has made it easier to sell the idea that what binds us together is not a common language, culture, genetic endowment, homeland, and history, but an “abstract and revolutionary idea,” whether equality or liberty.

As I have discussed in a number of articles in Chronicles and elsewhere and in two speeches at the John Randolph Club, this idea was used in an Americanization campaign in the early 20th century to strip Continental immigrants (many of them Catholic) of their particular European ethnic identities—all in the name of aiding “assimilation.” While superficially successful (these groups began to regard themselves as fully American to the extent that they rejected their native traditions, language, and culture and subscribed instead to the American “creed”), the process had the opposite effect in the long run. The true assimilation that comes from living together and developing common traditions and a common history—the assimilation that actually creates a nation—was strangled in its crib. (The better route would have been to cut off immigration and to let assimilation occur naturally.)

And yet, despite the obvious effects that policies predicated on the idea of America as a credal nation have had, their success has proved the point: To the extent that we can say that there is an American national identity today, it is in spite of, not because of, the concept of credal nationhood. The nation is not found in the credal capitol of Washington, D.C., but where nations are always found—in the surviving traditions and folkways of people living real, rooted lives on the land where their fathers lived and died.

Having gone on at too great a length already, I’ll save one final point—that “credal nationhood” is, and always has been, more about the state than about the nation—for my next post.

Watching Keith Olbermann cover primary after primary is agonizing (so why do I do it?). All he seems to do is rephrase this question again and again: “At some point does it become a Ponzi scheme/exercise in futility/yada yada yada…for Senator Clinton to continue to act as if she can win this nomination?” He obviously hates her and loves Obama. His disdain is a constant in his coverage. He threatens and fulminates about how she will be like Bush ’stealing’ the election from Gore. He just can’t believe that the Messiah’s coming is being delayed by this broad. I have never seen a more one-sided personality on TV, who has less to say. He doesn’t argue for a position, he just assumes its’ correctness and mocks those who disagree. Maybe he should calm down and lay out a case for what he believes, instead of being so smarmy and condescending. Ah, but that’s what we love these days. Hey, I am watching him, so something must be working.

BTW, I am watching Hillary’s speech as I write this - she doesn’t have any passion at all. I don’t think she believes a word she’s saying.

Lewis writes:

Though we all know, we often forget, that the existence of America was one of the greatest disappointments in the history of Europe. Plans laid and hardships borne in the hope of reaching Cathay, merely ushered in a period during which we became to America what the Huns had been to us. Foiled of Cathay, the Spainards fell back on exploiting the mineral wealth of the new continent. The English, coming later and denied even this, had to content themselves with colonization, which they conceived chiefly as a social sewage system, a vent for ‘needy people who now trouble the commonwealth’ and are ‘daily consumed with the gallows’ (Humphrey Gilbert’s Discourse, cap.10).

I’ve been thinking about my anscestors and my current reality. They came from Norway, Germany, Ireland and England. The most recent and dominant strains were Norwegian and German. My Grandmother spoke a good deal of Norwegian and preferred her Lutheran services in Norwegian. And yet this is completely lost to me. I don’t speak or read any Norwegian or German. I don’t read old Norse authors or study old Norse works. When we go to school, we study the Anglo-Saxon heritage, old English works, and the literature of England and nascent America.

This is right and how it should be. It is a good thing that Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin are not Norwegian enclaves that agitate for Norwegian on state forms and bi-lingual Norwegian education. Norwegians were absorbed into the Anglo mainstream. All of us descendants speak the language of Albion (England), we read Chaucer, Caedmon and Shakespeare. We have been assimilated, not into America, but into the Angloshpere. “Whites” who cast around for an identity forget that our past was as divided tribes, speaking German or French or Gaelic, not English. And yet we all are here, speaking English. And today, we see the same thing across the globe, in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, India, and North America - a sphere of nations that are formed by the English language, English norms and English history.

It is for this reason that I think English institutions ought to guide us, and we ought to seek out the English past as our own. Norway is lost to me, I will not use it’s history as a template for the United States. But England is the mother country of us all, for we speak her language. And this is just what will happen to the current wave of Hispanic immigrants. Over time they will lose any allegiance to Spain and it’s history (if any exists now), and by embracing English will need to learn Shakespeare and read about Queen Elizabeth just like the rest of us.

I further think that the existence of the Angloshpere with English as the mother tongue gives further impetus to the Anglican Church as the true home of English-speaking Protestants. The Lutheran tradition is a German, Norwegian and Swedish one. The Reformed churches remain Dutch in large measure. The Anglican Church is the logical choice for those of us who want to connect to the one catholic church, but are no longer German/Norse/Swedish in our speech and customs. It is a church for all of us who now speak English. It is an English institution that is inescapable in the history of our literature. Sometimes it is at the periphery, sometimes at the center, but there it is, a force that means something to all English-speakers, even if they know nothing about her. The English language and England are now the unifying forces in much of the world, because our language is the lingua franca of the world.

We watched Jesus Camp on YouTube (see the first section here). It is about as bad as you can expect. I don’t think it’s an unfair portrait at all. It depicts a particularly wacky and un-educated sector of the church, but one that you may have come in contact with or be a part of. Tongues-speaking, America-worshiping, Bush-idolaters who don’t seem to talk about love much, but sure do bang on about moral issues. Let me state just a few problems with these brothers and sisters off the top of my head:

1. The lady who runs the camp is a female pastor (Becky Fischer). Females aren’t supposed to be pastors according to the Bible and 6,000 years of church history (Old and New Covenants). I find it quite interesting that on this issue the far out righties of charismatic/pentecostal circles are every bit as liberal as Episcopalians and Methodists. Women’s ordination is just fine with the goofball American church.

2. America isn’t God’s chosen nation, the Church is. We have a city above, not made with hands, that is our home. You can work for implementing God’s law here on earth and that is great, but don’t confuse our 200 year old nation with the promised land. We have no more claim on God then Chad or Singapore.

3. George Bush is a shallow Christian who violated 1,700 years of Christian Just War theory and has used the Christian right as his useful idiots. This movie is proof positive of the idolatrous love of this man that the goofy church has felt for the past seven years. Hopefully we will look back later and say ‘what the heck were we thinking’ in idolizing this President.

4. Worship in most goofball USA churches is completely un-tethered from historic Christian norms. We have salesmen telling us that it’s “all about environments” and nonsense like that. Where are the sacraments? Where is reverence? All we get is kookiness that rightly makes unbelievers feel like they have entered the twilight zone when if they even watch it form afar. Would you go to church with ranting and raving young kids who are channeling their parents and shouting out in ‘tongues’ so-called? Well, maybe you would…I guess lots of people do.

It is embarrassing to be part of this, and since we are all one via baptism, we are all part of it. When will the goofiness that is American Church stop? I don’t expect it in my lifetime, but I do think that over time quality and truth will prevail against this insanity.

To see a good depiction of American Church, watch the embedded episode of King of the Hill here.

Governments end, peoples and lands continue. The ‘United States of America’ might end as a political entity, but we would still be here, living on this land. If you wonder what this might look like, here is one possibility from the book The Barbarian Conversion from Paganism to Christianity by Richard Fletcher:

It is a familiar pattern: peripheral outsiders tend to model themselves upon the hegemonic power on whose flanks they are situated. When the defences of the Roman empire gave way the Germanic barbarians entered upon an inheritance for which they had long been preparing themselves. They came not to wreck but to join. In this manner the decline and fall of the western empire was to be not destruction but dismemberment, a sharing out of working parts under new management.

Behold the prophet from Boulder.

Americans want to live inside movies or TV shows. They want to fit their lives inside the narratives the see on the screen and have the glamour that they perceive these privileged few to be enjoying off screen. When the lights go down at the theater and a hush descends the average American is experiencing his or her version of a transcendent experience, movies are the American religion and the theater is the church. The individual is drawn inside the plot being played out before his eyes and will go from the theater playing out scenes from the film just watched in their own life whether it is using a line of dialogue, dressing in a certain manner, adopting a hairstyle or listening to a certain kind of music. The movies shape the culture. Along with TV and music they are the shaping influence on most people in the mass culture.

In the past, before the advent of mass communication and the global phenomenon of movies, common cultural heritage, community values, and literary narratives shaped people. All of the above still have an influence some greater and some less in the current age. Ethnic communities have shared norms and traditions that mold individuals, and in some communities of faith a narrative text has great shaping effects on the lives of the individuals within a community. The Quran in Islamic lands and amongst Muslims in the west is a powerful example of this and of course the Bible continues to have primary impact on Christian life and practice amongst Christian churches of all types as well as being a common foundation for much of what might be called western “culture” in the twenty-first century (movies, TV, music). The fact that western culture is exported to the entire world in modes of dress, music and movies means that a sort of overarching global superstructure of influence is everywhere prevalent while local cultures continue to function alongside and in competition with the new global super-culture. The Christian teenager growing up in suburban America for example will face the competing interests of values absorbed from her favorite bands, actor/idols, TV shows, magazines read, and friends who likewise are to great degrees inundated with such ‘global’ influences. The strength of the local church and love of its’ members alongside the family structure are massive pillar influences to such a teenager but still, the pervading super-culture leaves no one untouched.

In times past the provincial and local values of communities could stay relatively stable and intact over lifetimes as outside influences did not easily penetrate local communities but not so in our day. The flick of a switch or touch of a button opens an individual almost anywhere on the planet to a host of alien value-sources from all other corners of the planet.

The sacramental nature of the American religion of movies is on display every night as local flock to video stores to rent the latest offering from the studios and on the weekends when the mega-theater is swamped with cars of the thousands watching new releases. The stories we fit our lives into are increasingly not the novel or myth contained in a book but the worldview contained in a song or movie.

The Word of God has always survived the ravages and tempests of cultural upheaval around it and I expect the same to be true in our age. Though the narratives contained in the text of Scripture have competition in the super-culture that spans nations and cultures, it is at work transforming lives and smashing idols, and will produce the desired effects that God has purposed for it to accomplish. We must continue to fit our lives inside the narrative world of the Scripture and not inside the competing and false reality proffered to us in the form of mass entertainment. Come out from amongst her and be separate.