Wherein We Speak To Issues Of Church, Culture & Ethnicity

“Here’s what I’m having trouble with: either 1, genetics are as strong as you say, meaning that no matter the “environment”, a good deal of the traits of a person’s soul will shine through, or 2, genetics are as weak as you say, so much so that we need to be concerned about loosing it. A Christian worldview HAS TO transcend the genetics (I think this is clear in Scriptures), and that being the case, isn’t that the culture we should be striving to build? I am not contending that we build a democratic utopia – that has never worked and will never work, however, stating that “one can [NOT] get to Anglo-Protestant culture apart from a majority of Anglo-Protestant people” confuses me because we don’t FIRST want an AP culture. We must believe that the under-pinnings of the AP, because it has been successful pulls deeply from the the well of Christianity, which, no matter what the genetics is in the realm of possibility for an genetic club to achieve.”

Letter From DSE

Dave,

I once read someone define culture as faith poured over ethnicity. I think there is something to be said for that.

If we really believe that God loves diversity then we should expect there to be as many Christian cultures as there are ethnic people groups. While I am looking for all the world to be christian, I am not looking for all the world to have the same exact culture. I believe that Anglo-Protestant culture is distinct and unique to Anglo-Protestant people and that even if all the African continent genuinely converted and became “Reformed,” that wouldn’t mean that they would have a culture that was Anglo-protestant. (Nor should it mean that.)

In the book of Revelation we find the peoples streaming into the New Jerusalem by nation (ethnicity). There is a sense that even in the new Jerusalem distinctions remain. Now, they are certainly, one and all, Christian but they are not all the same culture or ethnicity as they file in.

I would say genetics are strong but not beyond experiencing extinction.

A Christian Worldview does transcend genetics in the sense that it has the power to alter the thinking habits of all people groups as well as individuals but it does not transcend genetics in the sense that genetics becomes irrelevant to who the people group are who have been converted. If the Mongolian nation (people) were to be given Repentance there would still be something about them that was Mongolian and their Christian faith would be expressed in a Mongolian way. Similarly if the Albanian nation (people) were to be given repentance there would still be something about them that remained Albanian and their Christian faith would be expressed in an Albanian fashion. Mongolians and Albanians would be brothers in Christ but they would not cease being Mongolians and Albanians and neither would their cultures become automatically the same. Now, there certainly would be touchstones between them but they also would remain distinct.

Now, as to the whole issue of not first wanting a Anglo-Protestant culture. That is true in and of itself but when we consider that an Anglo-Protestant culture was what it was because of Christ (always in need of ongoing sanctification to be sure) then the desire to have a Anglo-Protestant culture is the desire to have Christ. The Anglo-Protestant culture was a culture built by faith being poured over ethnicity.

Missiologists spend a great deal of time talking about contextualization and planting a truly indigenous Church. Well, that is what happened in the West. The Church was planted in the West and it became truly indigenous. That is what we should desire for every tribe, tongue and nation. A Christianity that is universal in the sense of making all men brothers because of the finished work of Christ as applied by the Spirit and yet distinct in the sense that God’s plan doesn’t mean we all become the same. In my estimation this satisfies the character of God who is both One and Many.

So Christianity will change a people regardless of their genetics but it will change them in keeping with their genetics. Welsh, Xhosa, Cantonese, and Indian (to take some arbitrary examples) will all be converted and become brothers and be members of the one universal Church of Christ but that does not mean they will all build the same culture or that the distinctions that make them who they are, ethnically, culturally or even ecclesiastically speaking, have to go away.

God loves diversity and Revelation seems to indicate that diversity remains in the New Heavens and Earth.

Thanks for helping me think through this and articulate it. I think there is something important in all of this because the prevailing tendency today is to put all of our differences in a blender and mix them all up. Multi-culturalism can’t exist without the support of multi-faithism and multi-racialism. The result of this project is not a honoring of the distinctives that God has created of race, ethnicity, and culture (and even gender) but the elimination of them and the creation of a unipolar world where all the colors bleed into one. Honestly, such a project strikes me as being familiar and similar to the project of Babel in Genesis 11. Further, such a project, I am convinced, has as its real goal the elimination of the only faith, and the resultant culture that refuses to “bleed into one.”

I suppose for the sake of those who will willfully try to twist what I have said I should try to articulate some other ideas. First, because I am Anglo-Protestant it is only natural that I prefer Anglo-Protestant culture, just as because I am a McAtee I prefer my own children over against someone elses children. This doesn’t mean I hate other peoples children, it merely means that I prioritize my own. Similarly, I don’t have to hate other people’s race, ethnicity, or culture in order to prefer my own. Second, when Reformation comes to the World the differing Christian cultures that will result will become various body parts of the one body. They will each have their strengths that will serve the whole, but the whole body will not become a hand or an eye, nor needs to. Differences can remain, be honored and should be sustained for the good of the body.

God gave us a picture of all this in the covenant people of the Old Testament. They were all God’s people and yet they all belonged to distinct tribes. In the New and Better covenant the one people of God are drawn from every tribe, tongue and nation but they remain according to “tribe, tongue, and nation.” The Scriptures teach me that the Gentiles come in. The Scripture does not teach me that the Gentiles have to lose their distinct culture in order to come in. (Indeed, Galatians suggests that Gentiles don’t have to become culturally Jewish in order to be Christian.)

I’ve spent some time in my life with dear Christian brothers and sisters in Zimbabwe. I love them dearly and have tried to show that love by supporting them financially in their time of need. Having said that, I wouldn’t want to become part of their culture in order to become Christian and I wouldn’t expect them to become part of my culture to become Christian. There is enough diversity in God that both cultures could be “Christian” having one Lord, one Faith, and one Baptism.

Well, I’ve gone on a little because such discussions are, for whatever reason, open to hostile reactions. Thanks for listening.

More On Samuel Huntington and Fouad Ajami

“Critics who branded (Huntingdon’s) book as a work of undisguised nativism missed an essential point. Huntington observed that his was an ‘argument for the importance of Anglo-Protestant culture, not for the importance of Anglo-Protestant people.’ The success of this great republic, he said, had hitherto depended on the willingness of generations of Americans to honor the creed of the founding settlers and to shed their old affinities. But that willingness was being battered by globalization and multiculturalism, and by new waves of immigrants with no deep attachments to America’s national identity. ‘The Stars and Stripes were at half-mast’ he wrote in ‘Who Are We?’, ‘and other flags flew higher on the flagpole of American identities.'”

Faoud Ajami
Wall Street Journal Article On Huntington

1.) It is difficult to see how one can get to Anglo-Protestant culture apart from a majority of Anglo-Protestant people. Huntington desired A native America maintaining its original meaning but manned by a people shaped and drawn by a plethora of alien cultures. This is the ridiculous notion of America as a “proposition nation.” Now certainly people from other cultures and nations can become American but only as America remains a majority of Anglo-Protestant people. When America becomes a majority of non Anglo-Protestant people America will no longer have a Anglo-protestant culture.

2.) The third sentence of that quote above is also questionable. During the war of Northern Aggression many immigrants did not honor the creed of the founding settlers and did not shed their old affinities but instead forced those old socialistic affinities on the South and the country through the war and the reconstruction that followed. An argument might be made that what happened in the war of Northern aggression was that America was battered by the use of those immigrants who had no deep attachment to America’s national identity.

This can be seen in how the Union cause attracted to itself numerous German revolutionaries who had fled to America after collapse of the European uprisings of 1848. Though they had left the Deutschland behind, these Germans had not abandoned a radicalism that was anything but American. As a result they were among the greatest haters of all things American. Professor Clyde Wilson reminds us of an encounter between one of these German radicals and Confederate General Richard Taylor. In his elegant memoir, “Destruction and Reconstruction,” General Taylor recalled the occasion in 1865 when the duty fell to him to surrender the last Confederate army east of the Mississippi River. At Union headquarters, a German, wearing the uniform of a Yankee general and speaking in heavily accented English, lectured General Taylor that now that the war was over, Southerners would be taught “the true American principles.” To which General Taylor — the son of Zachary Taylor — replied that he regretted that his grandfather, an officer in the Revolution, and his father, President of the United States, had not passed on to him these “true American principles.”

It is not politically correct or multi-culturally proper but the fact of the matter is that you can not sustain Anglo-Protestant culture apart from a clear majority of Anglo-Protestant people who have been trained to cherish what makes them uniquely them which includes their ethnicity, family ties, faith, language, traditions, customs, and land. If this is not pursued what will result is that those who are Anglo-Protestant will be ashamed of their own unique culture and exchange their unique culture for the mono-culture of multi-culturalism.

Wherein A Smart Guy Agrees With Me

“Three possible American futures beckoned, (Samuel) Huntington said: cosmopolitan, imperial and national. In the first, the world remakes America, and globalization and multiculturalism trump national identity. In the second, America remakes the world: Unchallenged by a rival superpower, America would attempt to reshape the world according to its values, taking to other shores its democratic norms and aspirations. In the third, America remains America: It resists the blandishments — and falseness — of cosmopolitanism, and reins in the imperial impulse.”

Culled From A Wall Street Journal Article By Foud Ajami

The synopsis of Ajami is taken from Huntington’s last work, “Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity.” Huntington was a Harvard academic whose name became big in 1993 when he wrote, “Clash of Civilizations.”

Huntington’s observations, as summarized by Ajami, is exactly what I’ve been trying to get at for years on the political scene. In Huntington’s plausibility structure it is the Democrats who are seeking to push the Cosmopolitan America. Democrats wish to remake America into the World’s socialism image. On the other hand it is the Republicans who are seeking to push Huntington’s Imperial model where we export our socialism image on the whole world. The twist though is that Democrats want to use Imperial efforts domestically in order to force us to be Cosmopolitan while the Republicans desire Cosmopolitanize the world with their definition of multiculturalism. The end though is that both parties are working towards the same end. The only difference is that they are working towards that same end from different directions. In both scenarios the World, will in the end, look very much the same. Whether Huntington’s Cosmopolitan vision triumphs or whether Huntington’s Imperial vision triumphs, the result will be the same egalitarian, socialistic, tyrannical bland sameness. For the Cosmopolitans American becomes the World. For the Imperialists the World becomes America. But in the end it all becomes the same. If you mix Coke and Orange Juice or if you mix Orange Juice and Coke, in the end its all the same. Just so with the Cosmopolitan and Imperial visions.

Huntington’s third way recommends itself the most. However, in order for their to be a third way we have to return to the Christian version of what America was intended to be. If America will be America that automatically means that we discontinue with the Wilsonian nonsense of making the world in our image by means of the forceful extension of “freedom and democracy” — whatever the hell those words mean anymore. Huntington’s vision requires us to return to an “America First” mindset. It means that we have to quit with the notion that America is a “proposition nation” (could their be any more of a Cosmopolitan notion?) and return to the idea that America is a distinct place that is defined by its traditions, customs, land, people, and faith. It means a return to an America that is defined by distinctly Christian (and yes Protestant) ethos. It means that we drive a nationalistic spear through the heart of Cosmopolitan political correctness and multiculturalism and through the lungs of Imperial over-reach.

Personally, though I like Huntington’s call for America to remain America I wonder if it is to late for us to be able to do that.Are there enough Americans who know what America means? Are there enough elites who desire for America to remain America? (See Christopher Lasch’s “Revolt Of The Elites”) I know there aren’t enough Churches who would be willing to articulate a Christian Protestant vision of America. The Church has embraced the Cosmopolitan vision and is to busy trying to destroy itself by embracing all cultures.

(Remember culture is created by faith. In order to embrace all cultures it means that at the same time we must embrace all faiths.)

Those Poor Animals

So I’m walking through the living room where my family is watching the New Year’s Days Parade, and a commercial comes on with the lead sentence, every 10 seconds some animal is abused in America.” From there they went to camera shots of pets that had been abused. It was obviously an appeal to sympathy.

Now, I’m as sensitive a guy as the next guy but personally I was disgusted by the commercial. Here we have a culture that is killing 1.3 million babies annually and I’m expected to feel sorry for a bunch of dumb animals? Certainly, seeing any of God’s creation abused is sad but can we get a sense of proportion?

I also noted the power of imagery. They put these poor suffering animals on the screen and instantly the instinct is to feel sympathy and yet it is considered taboo to show pictures of slaughtered babies.

This commercial reminded me how hardened and cynical this culture is. It disgusts me that this is “my culture.”

Anybody want to bet a large sum of money that the very people who made this “feel sorry for the pets of the world” commercial are also people who strongly support abortion?