plus ça change...

I ran across the following recently in a discussion of political policy in one corner of the internet:

” … to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one’s unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action. Fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man …”

Was this a trenchant summary of America's recent foreign policy? Nope.
A retrospective indictment of American involvement in Viet Nam? No.
A historical condemnation of the conditions in Europe which led to World War I? Still, no.
A denunciation of Victorian hubris or Napoleonic vainglory? Again, no.

It could easily have stood in for these and much else of relatively recent vintage, but the fact is it is a quotation from Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, a fourth century BC account of a late fifth century war.

plus ça change...
...plus la même.

Remembering the Soixante-huitards

It just struck me today that we are this month marking the 40th anniversary of the 1968 student protests and general strike which took place in Paris (and subsequently throughout France) in Mai 1968. At one point, 10 million workers had joined together in the strike - 10 million! That's 2/3 of the entire workforce at the time.

On the one hand, the protests and the shocks they brought to the nation ushered in some notable changes at the time, not least substantial increases in wages. It was also a major shift in socio-moral attitudes, along the lines of the changes in America and elsewhere in the West at the time. Mai 68 (soixante huit) is still considered a major turning point in France.

On the other hand, as was the case with many student protests and much of the left wing activism in America at the time as well, the movement seemed to founder and sputter, in many cases quickly, and as the decades have worn on, the concerns which gave rise to protests have been set aside for more materialist and self-centred goals. If the 1960s were one sort of watershed, the 1980s were another -and I am more qualified to make that judgement of America than France.

It's rather striking how little genuine activism there is now as compared with then. One might suggest it is because everything is fine now, but I suspect we all know better than that. So what is it? Part of it, at least here in the UK, was the strategy adopted in the 1980s by the ascendent Tories of dividing and conquering labour. Labour was either domesticated or disenfranchised, in either case taking what little power there was out of the hands of the workers. But it is also more complex as nations have seen their manufacturing bases shift to third world nations, places where - mostly - workers don't have the right to organise and bargain collectively. And while wages might be higher than what was available before, and workers even grateful for the opportunity (there is all kinds of ambiguity here - the issues are complex), nevertheless it is also an exporting of labour from the West, with detrimental effects on the no-longer-employed. It will be fascinating to see in a generation or two what we are doing to find suitable cheap labour as workers become organised and/or better educated and can start demanding better wages; add this to the coming energy crisis, and it will be a markedly changed world.

It is also interesting right now to reflect on the student protests of the soixante-huitards and compare it with current-day street conflict. Last night there was widespread violence and rioting in Manchester in the wake of the UEFA cup football match. (video here, thanks to ubiquitous CCTV.) People were observed drinking as early as 7 in the morning in preparing for the match. This serves as quite a contrast with the Mai 1968 protests. Not that there was no drinking or thuggishness in 1968, but that the entire protest was undertaken for better conditions for students and workers. Manchester, on the other hand, was just stupid drunken football hooliganism.* We've come a long way, baby.

Now, in memory of the 68 protests, a couple of videos documenting different aspects of it. The first one is quite interesting, presenting some of the protest art which came out of the movement. Do watch it all the way through, to see the statement at the end. It is all the work of the Atelier Populaire, and although (with the music in the video, especially) it can seem almost whimsical, it is also deadly serious.




There also seem to be a lot of punk music videos set to pictures of the 68 protests, plus a four part series (en Francais) documenting the entire thing. (Begin the latter series here.) But here is one video - in French, I looked but couldn't find a decent English language one, sorry - that gives a little (photographic) overview, which is also an ad for a French company which makes available historical documentation of such things.




There is a fair amount more on YouTube and elsewhere giving a sense of what May 1968 was all about, but I thought I might at least offer a few little starting points, as well as point out some of the historical ironies - and sigh a bit that more isn't being done now.

*It probably should go without saying that the vast majority of the fans, whether supporters of St. Petersburg or Glasgow, were peaceful and funloving.

...and taking with the other

Recently I've said a few things about Baptists, like if you were to scratch an American, you'll find a Baptist underneath. To clarify, I am particularly talking about the habits of mind and soul that almost any American takes for granted as being true -- so much so that to suggest otherwise borders on socio-cultural heresy. And many of those habits parallel quite closely distinctive teachings and convictions of the Baptist tradition.

Actually, what they really approximate is the liberal tradition that came out of the Enlightenment, but when I call my Southern Baptist pastor friend a liberal compared to me (I'm an Episcopal priest) he just laughs. But it's true. The Congregational, Baptist, Unitarian, and most other free church traditions -- especially those that came early to America -- share these characteristics in common, and are properly called "liberal" traditions. I don't call them "liberal" because that would lead to more misunderstanding than calling them Baptist. (In fact, I try to avoid the term "liberal" altogether, because -- like "literalism" -- I think it can become a very grey catch-all term, with any number of a vast array of meanings. Some of the meanings even contradict the other meanings. So I try to leave it alone. If you do ever hear me use it, though, I am almost certainly talking about the sense of "liberal" I am outlining here.)

So here in a rough-and-ready outline are some characteristics of Americans, Baptists and other liberals:
1) privileging of the literal level of interpretation over any other.
2) distaste for the symbolic and abstract/preference for the literal and concrete.
3) utilitarian and pragmatic, seeing beauty and ornament as extras (which, when push comes to shove, are unnecessary).
4) stress on the individual (and her conscience) as the seat of authority, in interpretation especially; community is secondary or nonexistent.
5) stress on The Bible, and the Bible's perspicacity -- and hence a de-emphasis on interpretation, or a denial that it takes place.
6) stress on liberty of the individual, versus communal or tradition-based norms, with a corresponding de-emphasis on any historical memory.
7) emphasis on voluntary membership in church, a group whose authority is entirely congregational, and run by popular vote (or possible a board of elders). Suspicion of either a concrete, embodied church structure (whether full-blown episcopacy, or even a regional synod or classis), or of "high" doctrines of the church as anything other than a human, voluntary creation. The notion that one might be a Christian in isolation, without being a member of any church seems to be common sense.
8) strong emphasis on separation of church and state.
9) strong tendency to divide the world up into "spiritual" and "political", so that the two should not meet: that is to say, faith is "private" while politics is "public".
10) strong sense that salvation is other-worldly, i.e. it's about going to heaven, and that we should do as much as possible to help others make a decision that will help them "spiritually". This often entails a corresponding de-emphasis on this-worldly efforts by Christians, except, perhaps, as they lead to the spiritual.
11) often displays a sense of patriotism that goes beyond affection for one's country to an assurance that it is favored or chosen by God, perhaps an instrument of God in the world.

We are all Baptists to some extent: we all have to wrestle with these habits of mind and life, as they have simply been given to us and they are in the bedrock of our national culture -- moreso, I would argue, than the Puritans and their convictions. Of course, even if we define ourselves against this characterization we are still demonstrating the Baptist/ American influence. Naturally we don't need to accept these habits, even if they've so deeply shaped us. But if we have been formed by them, it will be difficult (and will seem anything but natural) to notice them, to doubt them, and to think and act differently.

I will, in time, try to make more observations about how these habits show themselves in our society. I think this conversation (if you make comments) is important, because this is not just our Baptist-liberal-American culture, but increasingly, as we assume the mantle of World Empire, and spread our way of life through global commerce (a parody of Christian mission), it is becoming the way of the world.

America is a ________ Nation

I have a friend who is fond of saying that America is a Christian nation; I have to confess that I don't know what he means.That's not just a rhetorical ploy: I think that the phrase is so overused, so general, and so thoughtlessly invoked to support one cause or another, that it is in fact unclear to me just what people mean they use it. It could mean:
Continue reading America is a ________ Nation

1) The majority of American citizens are actually Christian. This is the most straightforward meaning, and also has the virtue of being (more or less) verifiable. One could do a poll and discover that (say) 85% of Americans can recite the Apostles' Creed without flinching. But while this meaning is verifiable, it also has the disadvantage of being useless: what, precisely, follows from the fact that most American citizens are Christian? It is also verifiable that a majority of American citizens are female. Does that mean that all true Americans are actually female, or at least willing to allow females to set the national agenda, and get out of their way when they seek to make policy that affects all of us? If it is not true for females, why do we Christians feel differently? I suspect it is because we (or at least some of us) subscribe to a different sense of America being Christian than this one. Maybe it is:

2) Historically, the institutions of America were set up by Christians and were based on (Judeo-?) Christian principles. Again, we seem to be on relatively safe ground (although not as safe as #1). We can easily do a historical survey and find that a large number of the major figures in the founding of our nation were Christians of one stripe or another, mostly either evangelicals or unitarians. Of course, if we want to be really precise, we should say that America is a Protestant (and then either evangelical and rationalist) nation, for Roman Catholicism was seen as an unwelcome outside influence. Roman Catholics have struggled mightily for quite some time to show that they are true-blue Americans, think of the suspicions surrounding John F. Kennedy. They have come quite a ways, though, as the criticism by many of John F. Kerry was not that he was too closely aligned with the pope, but that he wasn't close enough. I also think it is significant that the Protestants who were most influential in the founding of America (evangelical, rationalist) had almost no sense of the church as a visible embodiment of the Kingdom. American evangelicals of either the reformed or pietist varieties have typically seen the church as a voluntary collection of believers. Rationalists were usually concerned with doing one's duty and living a good life; the church for them was more about making decent, respectable citizens than making saints. The Transcendentalists who inherited a good bit of the rationalist establishment had even less use for the church, seeing it as primarily an unwelcome accretion of hoary tradition which should be stripped away to find the "true religion of man". (I admit, the foregoing was an oversimplification; but this is a blog, not a monograph, and I will stand by them as substantially correct) All of which is to say that the institutions of America were set up by certain kinds of Christians, who were themselves products of certain historically specific conflicts. So at any rate, those who hold to this second version need to 'fess up that it is not a Christian nation, broadly construed, but a certain kind of Christian nation, and there might be certain other Christians who would not be at home here (much less Muslims, Buddhists, or atheists). But in the end we shouldn't be distracted into qualifying the claim in this way, because it is really a problem of description versus prescription: just because thus and such was (descriptively) the case at the founding of the nation, it does not lead to thus and such needing to be the case here and now. For example, the founders of the nation were also propertied white males, and yet today we extend the franchise to the poor, to people of other races and ethnicities, and to women without a thought. (Granted it took awhile, but we eventually made those changes and found that we were still Americans afterward.) It could, of course, be the case that America is by definition Christian, as perhaps one might suggest it is by definition egalitarian. In that sense, a prescription (America should be Christian) might follow from a description (America was founded by Christians). But that is not meaning number 2, it's meaning numbers 3 and 4:

3) It was the intention of the founders of America that we be a Christian nation. This is rather more difficult to establish, and even if one could establish it, it still isn't clear what follows from it. For example, it could be shown that the founders also intended that only propertied white males be able to vote -- but again, we have extended the franchise (and confounded the founders' intentions) with little or no problem. The same would hold true of their intentions vis-a-vis religion.

So far, we have looked at the following justifications for America being called a Christian nation: Most Americans are Christians, The nation was founded by Christians, The nation was founded by Christians who intended it to be a Christian nation. None of these seem persuasive, but there is one more meaning of the phrase "America is a Christian nation" which I suspect many actually hold, perhaps with some measure of bad conscience:

4) America is a Christian nation because it is God's elect nation. In this version, America has been given by God a role analogous to Israel in the Old Testament, as God's chosen instrument. America bestows and spreads God's gifts throughout the world: freedom, liberty, consumer goods, true religion. This very sense of America as elect nation has crept into our president's rhetoric about war, but he is only the most recent proponent of a longstanding American tradition. (It is also a longstanding British tradition: they did it before us, and, frankly, they did it better, though no more convincingly. They also have the benefit of having ceased this rhetoric for the most part.) The Puritans' sense of the nation being a "shining beacon on a hill" has often been enlisted in this cause, although I think it is usually misunderstood by those who so use it. Quite often, this sense of America as an elect nation owes much more to civil religion than to anything demonstrably Christian, and there's a reason for that: no such claim can be supported from the Bible, tradition, or theological reason. It is, perhaps, gnostic, a claim to a secret revelation, a secret knowledge about God's call, God's plan for the world, and the nature of this nation. Such a claim usurps the role of the actual political body which is analogous (if not quite superseding) to Israel in the Old Testament: the church, the chosen saints of God salted throughout the nations of the world. Because of this, such a claim is damnable idolatry and should be renounced by any self-respecting Christian.

America is none of these. America is not a Christian nation. America is a nation, pure and simple. It is one of the nations (the Greek word can also be translated Gentiles) that Israel and the Church are to live among, to which Jesus sent us to make disciples.

I realize that this opens up as many questions as it answers, probably more. For example, what is the proper role of the Church in America? If the Church is the primary political body for Christians, then to what extent should Christians be involved in the political doings of the nation-state? As Christians, we may have ceded to the nation-state some of our own responsibilities (caring for the poor, the elderly, the sick), as my friend Pamela suggests in a comment earlier, but does that mean we should discourage the nation-state from doing that? I don't know the answers to these questions, even for myself, much less to persuade others. I know that it is quite complex, and any response will reflect that. But I am quite dissatisfied with the present syntheses on offer, which seem to boil down like this:

1) Make the state the church, outlawing (say) the teaching of evolution, mandating prayer in schools, and so forth. As I said to a dear friend last week in an e-mail, this version seems to think that if we just overturn Roe v. Wade then the Kingdom of God will come in its fullness, which is palpable nonsense. or:

2) Check your faith at the door, leaving your convictions about that which informs (ideally) the whole of your life to one side as unimportant.

I could and no doubt will say more about this in future, although perhaps to trumpet my perplexity and ignorance as much as anything else. Maybe one of my three (!) gentle readers will add his or her comments.

But for now, this much I am sure of: America is a nation, full stop.