I was reminded today - via Facebook, A.S. - that there are a lot of Christians who still see themselves as victims of secularization, a persecuted minority, as the warred-against faithful who seek to resist the encroachment of the barbarian hordes of "secular humanists," evolutionists, and Muslims. Someone was defending Kirk Cameron (and his newly inspired stupidity of plagiarizing The Origin of Species) as a swell guy and Christ-lover who should not be ridiculed for defending Christianity against "darwanism." While I am tempted to go on a tirade against the idiocy of Kirk Cameron and his ilk's fundamental misunderstanding of Scripture and the point of God's visit to earth, I will leave that aside and focus on the mentality that is evidenced in the defense of such a man and such a vision.
It is baffling to me that Christians see themselves as victims of the "secular world," although I think I nevertheless understand the reasons. The very true truth that Christ-followers will be despised can be fundamentally bastardized to support a particular system and world-view that must be defended at the sake of defending the true message of Christ, in this case, a system of anti-intellectualism and a fundamental misunderstanding of the boundaries and interactions of science and faith, or more generally, "faith and reason." There are of course social and economic factors: those liberals (who have more money than me, mostly, and statistically, when one is looking at the blue-state-read-state divide, longer lasting and healthier families and marriages) hold fast to their evolutionism and their gay marriage and don't care about the fundamentals of the Bible and family.
In short, it pays to be a reactionary, and pays to maintain the us-them mentality that is being purported in such a "debate" - "debates" normally can't be defined as a one-sided, degenerate soliloquy, however. It pays a particular kind of socio-spiritual currency: I am rich because I am having all my "rights" taken away from me, because I am a holdout. Leaving aside the fact that Christians have no rights in the first place, I think one of the fundamental insights being expressed is that my "fundamentals" are essentially trite social pendants that allow me still to scream my Christianity out and lambast those who are gainst me. How are my kids supposed to be Christian if they can't pray in school like they used to? (nothing's stopping them, I would like to scream!). I wonder if Jesus' criticism of those who love to pray in public has any reference to such a situation? Thus we can define our Christian identity in relation to our reaction, our reaction against this or that, and not to the qualities and teachings of Christ and our new lives in him.
In short, we may rightly begin to question our Christianity because we are so liked and free. To bitch about our losses of freedom and rights as Christians is just vacuous and stupid; we are among the freest people on all the earth, who have ever lived. Our rights and privileges overflow.
There are plenty of enemies of Christ out there. It's not without of the realm of possibility for me to conceive Cameran and the IDers right along with them. What message is really being touted by such folk? That science is the enemy? That the Bible, understood the way I see it, is the revelation of God? No, Christ is the revelation, and Christ and his Church had and have little time for the quotidities of "proving" that God fashioned the world and designed it (not that he didn't and doesn't, mind you). Darwin wasn't the enemy.
There are powers and principalities that far outstrip the influence of evolutionary theory and Darwin that now threaten to leave us dead and opposed to Christ (as indicated in my last post). Now, we are the enemy.
You hit the nail on the head with this:
"Leaving aside the fact that Christians have no rights in the first place."
It all boils down to that. Completely agreed. You wrote on facebook a while back that Christians clinging fervently to their "rights" is far more dangerous than clinging to their guns. I think it was when the church in Louisville hosted the "bring your gun to church" service (which I wrote a blog post on and paraphrased you).
The challenge is how to engage in conversation with these people in a respectful way in order to attempt to enact change. I have tried to do this. My husband has tried. You have tried. We all continue to try. The three of us are in unique positions because we are not necessarily seen as "liberal elite outsiders" since most of the people we are engaging with are actually friends and family we grew up with. But these "conversations" usually feel like beating my head against a wall. I also have an additional handicap because I will occasionally lose my temper, impulsively spout off something really sarcastic and rude, and thus completely shatter my credibility. Plus I'm not a consistently good communicator in the first place.
People on the fringe fundamentalist Christian right don't believe that my husband and I, or you, or President Obama, or Jimmy Carter, or even someone like Jim Wallis, are really Christians. That is what we're up against. Even if we were to take a dig-our-heels-in hardline stance against say, abortion or gay marriage, and then supported progressive economic policies, it is likely we would still be labeled godless liberal "demoncrats." This is the kind of extremism we have in our country now.
(Don't get me wrong, there are dangerous extremists on the left as well. They are just not making news right now and I don't feel like I'm in a position where I can personally engage with them - i.e. most of them don't live in Oklahoma).
Posted by: GraceKathryn | October 17, 2009 at 02:31 PM