Douthat: on Christmas

[MikeWaters]

He is becoming one of my favorite commentators.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/20/op...t.html?_r=1&hp

In the last 50 years, the Christian churches have undergone what “American Grace” describes as a shock and two aftershocks. The initial earthquake was the cultural revolution of the 1960s, which undercut religious authority as it did all authority, while dealing a particular blow to Christian sexual ethics. The first aftershock was the rise of religious conservatism, and particularly evangelical faith, as a backlash against the cultural revolution’s excesses. But now we’re living through the second aftershock, a backlash to that backlash — a revolt against the association between Christian faith and conservative politics, Putnam and Campbell argue, in which millions of Americans (younger Americans, especially) may be abandoning organized Christianity altogether.

Their argument is complemented by the University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter’s “To Change the World,” an often withering account of recent Christian attempts to influence American politics and society. Having popularized the term “culture war” two decades ago, Hunter now argues that the “war” footing has led American Christians into a cul-de-sac. It has encouraged both conservative and liberal believers to frame their mission primarily in terms of conflict, and to express themselves almost exclusively in the “language of loss, disappointment, anger, antipathy, resentment and desire for conquest.”

Thanks in part to this bunker mentality, American Christianity has become what Hunter calls a “weak culture” — one that mobilizes but doesn’t convert, alienates rather than seduces, and looks backward toward a lost past instead of forward to a vibrant future. In spite of their numerical strength and reserves of social capital, he argues, the Christian churches are mainly influential only in the “peripheral areas” of our common life. In the commanding heights of culture, Christianity punches way below its weight.

I think, in some ways, this is the part that bothered me most about the Prop 8 debate and the LDS church's role. Why this issue? Why is this the one thing that we mobilize about, in a world full of problems and troublesome issues? Do we become the anti-gay church? "Well, Mike, that's really not fair, we are not anti-gay, we are pro-marriage." First off, it doesn't matter what you think. It's popular perception that matters, in a battle for hearts and minds. And spirits.

I think the church is in the midst of a kind of identity crisis. You can go through a long list of crises that the church has gone through. Including Kirtland, Far West, Nauvoo, Joseph Smith succession, Mormon War, Polygamy, acceptance of Utah as a state, emerging from Utah, shedding polygamy, becoming an international church, race relations (blacks and priesthood), branding itself as family-oriented good people, positive ecumenical relations, "we are not weird", becoming more publicly Christ-centered, and finally acceptance of Utah into Pac-10. [j/k about the last one!].

What exactly are we about? What's our message to the world? We are in the beginning of the post-Hinckley period, or perhaps a continuation of the Hinckley period, which I kind of summarize as "we are normal good people."

The fine print is all still the same. Have faith, repent, be baptized, be good members, do missionary work, temple work, etc. But what is the subtext? The theme?

I'm afraid that focusing on gay issues is a negative theme that may come to define the church in the minds of many. I don't want to be a church that "mobilizes, but doesn't convert." How can we inspire?

[Levin]

I like Douthat too (especially on religion and culture), but his political commentary is pretty banal.