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Christianity and Culture: Relationship And Conflict

by jamal smith
1/13/2008 / World Affairs

When President Bush won his second election in 2004, his victory was attributed by many to what was known as the 'Christian Right'. These were supposedly people who added a conservative and religious worldview to their politics. Whether or not their votes were the actual reason behind the victory is not the point, the perception that it did conflicted with the American population that was more 'left' or liberal. Very soon the media painted a picture of an America divided into red and blue states and declared a 'culture war' had begun.
Is then the definition of culture and the Christian faith? Can such a conflict be so easily defined as different colored states, religious moral world views vs. 'self-centered humanistic' ones?
I do not believe it is that simple.
First is that much of what we call traditional or true Christianity is in fact already infected by secular culture, not as much of the current form as much as the older incarnations. And that we hold an incorrect perception of what the reality was during that actual time.
Second is that Christianity worldwide has a history of assimilating aspects of the culture that surrounds it, so much so that the believers who are birthed into that culture and time view that form of the faith as the only form. What the original form of Christianity was, one would be hard pressed to say definitively. To begin lets expand on the first point.
Modern American Christianity is defined broadly as conservative. What this actually translates into is a thought base and moral behavior that does not press the limits of what is socially and morally acceptable. Examples include drinking, swearing, smoking, what values music and media preach about, and so on. To me it seemed largely about conforming. We develop rightness of these ideas in part by comparing them to what the secular world currently does.
However older variations of American society have always had that aspect of family first and conforming to social norms. Those who challenged it and defied it were always considered outcasts and pariahs. We developed this from European standards since the first settlers were European in the first place. And Christianity was considered a part of that norm. It was a tradition that had been around since the beginning with the Pilgrims and the Puritans. To be considered American was practically being akin to being Christian in the eyes of many.
In this society, the aspects of Christianity about modest behavior and a certain order to how things worked matched very well with those who had an influence in the shaping of American society. And visa versa, aspects of those who held influence permeated Christian thought. This was perhaps most prevalent in the southern states of America. Though few owned plantations and slaves out of the total population, it was still they who held the most power and money and set the tone for what was normal and right. Hence while you had large focus on family and being respectable and modest, you also had the continuing de-humanizing of a race of people that far exceeded even ancient Roman, Greek, and Native American standards of slavery. And all this was done according to the bible as they saw it. It was considered Christian and those who rebelled against it were Godless and out to destroy order that God himself had set forth from the beginning.
There were the exceptions. You still had believers who were a little more gung-ho about their faith apart from the cultural norms, than others. And you still had the outsiders who thumbed their noses at the status quo regardless of religion or not.
In the far west during the later half of the 19th century, society was anything but what their eastern countrymen would call moral and upright. Brothels, gambling, violence, and Indian wars were not as disguised or dressed over as they had been in the east, but was more open and affluent for all to see and struggle with.
However despite this, one could say that during the early years of America, the culture and the faith underwent osmosis in many states.
Onto the second point now, Christianity wherever it takes hold is made up of people. And these people are raised and trained in certain ways of how to act and think and believe according to the world around them. If the believer was unsaved for awhile, then the Christian tenants may actually conflict with those cultural and social indoctrinations. Yet over time, as the believer community grows, it starts to subtlety take on those aspects which have permeated those people's lives since birth.
It happened with the first Jewish Christians when they still continued to follow the old religious traditions and laws that they did before they converted. It happened with the first gentile churches where certain cultural locations had cultural practices and norms that the Apostles found incompatible with Christ's teachings and yet the believers in those churches did them anyway because that was what they knew.
When church persecution finally ended 400 years after Christ's crucifixion, the church began to duplicate more of the splendor and pomp seen in Roman politics, religion, and lifestyle. They began to focus more and more on social order and the placements within that order, such as women holding no offices of power even though that had been a church tradition since its founding. Monasticism was a common eastern expression of absolute devotion to faith and was duplicated by not only the Orthodox Coptic Church but several other orders since then spanning from Rome to Ireland.
Taking all these facts into consideration I find it impossible for any one denomination or church in any geographical/ cultural location to claim that their expression of the faith is the correct or ultimate expression. And the same applies to American Christianity as well.
So is there truly a culture war in America, Christianity vs. American culture? Modern American culture perhaps, but not in the past I think. And that was not always a good thing.
The emergence of this conflict I think began the 1950's. Christian morals still held the social place of power in most aspects of American life, or at least public perception. Anything that was considered un-Christian was buried and not spoken of. Perhaps one extreme form of this was Senator McCarthy's hunt for communists within the entertainment industry. Communism was the bogeyman for America at that time, and the fact that one of its manifestos directly rejected any formal religion or God seem to make it all the more clear that Christianity and America were indeed on the same side.
But music and movies were beginning to push the envelope. Films and novels began coming out about aspects of American life that had always existed but before were deemed mentionable publicly, such as 'Peyton's Place'. What's more, social injustices that had been deemed as acceptable or at least status quo and safe for centuries were now being challenged and exposed publicly.
All this finally exploded in the 1960's. Many deem the watershed event was the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. American culture underwent a massive convulsion and upheaval as what had always been judged to be right and moral was threatened to be overturned. The authority it once enjoyed, now undermined by buried crimes of the past and rebellion.
I believe this marked the beginning of the conflict that we now term the culture war. And it is marked by a direct effort of one side wanting to divorce itself of a religious influence that has not always been beneficial, and an old standard trying to stay relevant and in place for the current culture and yet stay true to its fundamental beliefs. These two forces are struggling to find that balance.
Perhaps 'culture war' is too dramatic a term, too media hyped. A better phrase might be 'cultural metamorphosis'. Metamorphosis at its center involves change, demands it. This change does not always come easy. Even a butterfly has to struggle harder sometimes in order to breakout of its cocoon. In the end what comes forth is beautiful and better than what came before. And that's how I at least chose to see American society today.

Jamal Smith, graduated Roberts wesleyan college, BA, Brockport, NY, email: [email protected]

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