Tag Archives: culture wars

Taming Culture Wars

The supposed clash between different political groups in the United States has been described as a “culture war.” The painter and author Makoto Fujimura has described such a war “as a polarized mindset, viewing culture as territory to dominate rather than a common space Christians share with their neighbors.” (Quoted in “Defiant Joy,” Cosper, Mike; Christianity Today, December 2022)

In fact, we are all subject to human frailties and incompleteness. Jesus may be “the answer,” but none of us completely comprehends that answer, much less lives it. Thinking that we do, that people must see things the way we do is to choose the way the religious critics of Jesus did during his time on earth.

They ended up collaborating with the Romans to kill Jesus, just as too many people calling themselves Christians have taken part in religious wars to slaughter their “enemies.”

Perhaps we start with gratitude that God gives us the ability to think and ponder and observe and learn. We are each imperfect but with wonderful possibilities. We can look at those with whom we disagree as possibilities for our own learning.

We listen to them and converse and examine ideas. If they ask questions, we answer them with compassion and humility, grateful that we are talking, not fighting. We look to learn from them as well as share our own convictions.

Jesus spent much of his time in conversation with people, listening to them and answering their questions. People followed him because he attracted them and inspired them and gave them hope of a better way. They talked to him and listened to his answers and sometimes were changed. Surely, if we’re going to follow his example, we are called to that same way of interacting with the world.

Nones and the Rest

 

Recent polls cite the growing “nones” in American society, those who profess to have no religious preference. Judging by the declining numbers in established churches in much of Europe, religion appears less and less important in all Western countries. At the same time, recent revolutions in the Middle East have led to religiously affiliated governments. In some sense, the “nones’ of the West are balanced against the “rest” in a new array.

The current movie Argo pinpoints a beginning to this sea change. The movie is set in 1979 during the Iranian revolution. The revolution removed power from Iran’s secular leaders, including the Shah, and bestowed it on religious ones. The United States had supported the Shah and allowed him into the United States for medical treatment. In protest, Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy and took hostages.

Few at that time took seriously the notion of a revolution propelled by religion. Gary Sick, in his detailed book about that time, All Fall Down, includes a section on “Religion and Revolution.” He states: “We are all prisoners of our own cultural assumptions, more than we care to admit . . . the notion of a theocratic state seemed so unlikely as to be absurd.”

Since that time, religious movements have expanded in Africa and South America. They have increased in Asia, even in Communist China. In Russia, straddling the divide between Europe and Asia, the Orthodox Church realizes growing influence . The fiery conflicts in the Middle East, so prevalent in news reports, are part of this worldwide rethinking of secular and religious.

We are not seeing a clash so often between religions in the world today (though that certainly happens) as much as we are seeing a clash between the religious and the not religious, the rest and the nones.

Cultural Competition

Ethnic, political, and religious differences divide much of the world today, including the United States.  Global travel and instant communication force local lifestyles and centuries-old beliefs to compete with other lifestyles and beliefs.

Travelers before the modern era took months to travel from one area to another. Most people did not travel at all or know anyone except from their local villages and most could not read. When Americans began trekking across their continent, they traveled for weeks and sometimes months. First trains and then paved roads cut the time to days. Then planes shortened trips to hours.

Today, electronic communication means that Americans can instantly touch base with others all over the world. What happens in Mumbai, India, is available immediately on a computer or a cell phone in Chicago.

We are bombarded with other cultures and belief systems. Our own local group no longer shields us. The Iron Curtain, barricading the Soviet world from the West, fell with the advent of modern communication. Radio signals could penetrate it. Now the Internet, despite the efforts of some governments to block it, reaches savvy young people in most countries of the world.

American Christians no longer inhabit a culture influenced mostly by Christian beliefs. We share space with Hinduism, Islam, atheism, and a host of other world views. How do we react to this new world where we must again compete, as the early Christians did in the days of the Roman Empire?

How did those Christians operate? They traveled the Roman world from Arabia to the British Isles, but they did not force their views. They debated in the marketplaces, and they lived as examples that drew others to their faith.

 

Feminism—Islamic Style

Isobel Coleman, in an article in the Foreign Service Journal, writes about Islamic feminists. In countries like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, these women attempt to show that a reasoned approach to their religion, Islam, can open up possibilities for women and girls in conservative Muslim-majority countries.
http://www.afsa.org/FSJ/0411/index.html#/28/

Sometimes these women shy away from the term “feminist” because of the cultural Western baggage such a label carries. Whereas Western feminists generally have ignored religion, Islamic feminists tend to use their religion. They bring to their religious leaders passages in Islam’s Quran and suggest new interpretations. They see their religious inheritance as an ally.

One wonders how different the “cultural wars” in our society would have been if those who have sought change (often needed change) in the past few decades had begun with our religious inheritance instead of discarding it.

They might have dwelt on Paul’s words in Galatians 3:28: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (NRSV) For starters.