Saturday, May 22, 2010

Saturday Night- Part 3

Speaking of culture, is there, or has there been, a distinctively American culture and what are its challenges?
Have we lost it? Are we losing it? If we are losing it then how do we begin to bring it back?
And how does this mix/clash from a Christian point of view?

A recent review in Touchstone seems to ask a similar set of questions. George Barna, "The Seven Faith Tribes" appears to have written a thought provoking book on confronting the concern that "America is being torn apart by our failure to talk and work together toward a desired set of outcomes, based on a common set of values we possess."
Barna used data gleaned from 30,000 interviews and concludes that the problem with American culture is directly related to the loss of an American experience of community over and above our individual experiences of community.

Barna goes on to identify the existing values shared among the different world views or "tribes" and to build (rebuild?) our common life as a nation on them. He names twenty that can form the basis of genuine civic community according to the Reverand Thomas A Baima who reviewed the book, among them:
"to represent the truth well" (honesty)
mutual respect for human rights
civility

What values do you think are or should be on such a list?

6 comments:

Delirious said...

I'll admit, I've always missed having a real sense of cultural identity. When we lived in China, the International school there often had a culture appreciation day. The children would dress in native costume, and do native dances. The best my child could do for national costume was wear red, white and blue.... I do have a religious culture, being LDS and a daughter of the Utah pioneers, but it's not quite the same has having a national custom. My ancestry is mixed...Heinz 57...so I can't even draw upon that cultural background.
In the past I have looked to what it really means to be an American to define my cultural heritage, including our desire for democracy. But it seems in recent years that even this heritage is fading.

Magister Christianus said...

This comes from no research like that of Barna, but merely memories of my own past, stories from my own family, stories of Americans past, and frequent conversations with my wife. Part of what I think of as the distinctive American culture is hard work, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, honesty, integrity, helping a neighbor, the conviction that anything is possible, opportunity, rugged independence, and a sense of freedom rooted in general Christian principles.

Much of that has been lost and/or perverted. Hard work has been perverted into obsessive workaholism. "Bootstrapping" has disappeared into a belief that one is owed a good life without working for it. Honesty and integrity have morphed into relativistic notions of an ethical egoism that says, "I will do only what is in my best interest. If that is telling the truth, fine. If it is lying or cheating, just as good." Helping neighbors is lost in a culture that is increasingly fragmented through technology meant to bring us together and perverted by neighbors who expect handouts. Boundless possibility has been replaced with the belief that if it can be done, it should be done, thus leading us to embrace every form of moral perversion as the norm. Rugged independence, rather than saying, "I want to do this for myself, rather than rely on a handout," now says, "No one can tell me what to do, for I am my own god." Freedom, of course, has been replaced by license as all religious discourse is pushed out of the public square and Christianity in particular is demonized by the popular press.

kkollwitz said...

I read that article just a week ago.

As far as an image, the cowboy works fine for me.

Part of the problem of American cultural identity is that it isn't based on ethnicity. In Japan,e.g. it's easy to know who is Japanese: they are genetically related to other Japanese people, the extended family.

That's less true for, say, the French, but still important: a Frenchman is someone whose ancestors were French.

But America is based on an idea, or a group of ideas, a proposition. When the proposition is only fragmentally held in common, it's as bad a threat to the commonweal as ethnic dilution would be to the Japanese.

Magister Christianus said...

"Part of the problem of American cultural identity is that it isn't based on ethnicity. America is based on an idea, or a group of ideas, a proposition. When the proposition is only fragmentally held in common, it's as bad a threat to the commonweal as ethnic dilution would be to the Japanese."

Now that is well said. Now, turn that around and apply that to the Church. I think all Protestants would argue that the same is true for the body of Christ on earth. It is based on a group of teachings by Jesus Christ. Clearly we see the problem when those ideas are not commonly held or commonly understood.

kkollwitz said...

"Now, turn that around and apply that to the Church. I think all Protestants would argue that the same is true for the body of Christ on earth."

Very nice.

See, this is why his name is Magister.

eutychus said...

"this is why his name is Magister."

yup, and I drank a lot of beer and did a lot of listening in the old days.

I'm enjoying these new conversations and the comments from everyone almost as much. The only thing missing is the "immediacy" of the conversations