Take a look around your country, I think you’ll see quite a bit of pluribus, but very little unum. It has me wondering what’s up and where it’s all going.
Last December the Wall Street Journal ran an article by Russian academic Igor Panarin who has been predicting for the past 10 years that the U.S. will fall apart in 2010.
Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces . . . He based the forecast on classified data supplied to him by FAPSI analysts, he says. He predicts that economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the U.S. When the going gets tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow . . . Americans hope President-elect Barack Obama “can work miracles,” he wrote. “But when spring comes, it will be clear that there are no miracles.
Last week I ran across a Pat Buchanan article wondering if America was in the process of coming apart. I generally don’t read Pat Buchanan but I did this time and it wasn’t his normal histrionic polemic. Instead, I found a reasonable article lamenting the ongoing fragmentation occurring in our country:
We seem not only to disagree with each other more than ever, but to have come almost to detest one another. Politically, culturally, racially, we seem ever ready to go for each others’ throats.
One half of America sees abortion as the annual slaughter of a million unborn. The other half regards the right-to-life movement as tyrannical and sexist.
Proponents of gay marriage see its adversaries as homophobic bigots. Opponents see its champions as seeking to elevate unnatural and immoral relationships to the sacred state of traditional marriage.
The question invites itself. In what sense are we one nation and one people anymore? For what is a nation if not a people of a common ancestry, faith, culture and language, who worship the same God, revere the same heroes, cherish the same history, celebrate the same holidays and share the same music, poetry, art and literature?
Yet, today, Mexican-Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo, a skirmish in a French-Mexican war about which most Americans know nothing, which took place the same year as two of the bloodiest battles of our own Civil War: Antietam and Fredericksburg.
Christmas and Easter, the great holidays of Christendom, once united Americans in joy. Now we fight over whether they should even be mentioned, let alone celebrated, in our public schools.
Then, today, I read this article in the New York Times (The Washington Post had a similar take) about what was intended to be a conservative protest against the policies of the President and Democratic Congressional leaders – which it certainly was – but, it also seems as if there is another strain of protest present as well, a larger protest of what we’re becoming:
A sea of protesters filled the west lawn of the Capitol and spilled onto the National Mall on Saturday in the largest rally against President Obama since he took office, a culmination of a summer-long season of protests that began with opposition to a health care overhaul and grew into a broader dissatisfaction with government . . . . Ruth Lobbs, 57, a schoolteacher from Jacksonville, Fla., said she flew to Washington on Saturday to protest how she believes the government has violated the Constitution. She said she did not vote for the president, adding that her anger has been building for years.
“It’s more than Obama — this isn’t a Republican or a Democratic issue,” Ms. Lobbs said as she held a yellow flag that declared, “Don’t Tread on Me.” (empahsis mine)
As I read these articles and as I consider the deterioration and acrimony within our own denomination, I wonder, if this is the beginning of a larger disintegration?
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Recent analysis of the Mosaic Generation shows an almost complete retreat from the “group think” (shared worldview) that has marked previous generational groups. They are largely disconnected from one another and firmly believe they are responsible for formulating and walking a rule of life that they must create for themselves. Many are several generations removed from church involvement. Timothy Keller has found success in uniting people through Jesus Christ by establishing respectful – and often intellectual – relationships. I believe Todd and Joe are on the right track to accomplish the same goal at St. Andrews. The solution seems to be emerging. We must establish respectful relationships in the community while avoiding both “churchy” jargon and compromising the Gospel. Hmmmm…where have I heard, “Go ye into all the world…”, before?
” … is this the beginning of a larger disintegration?”
Yes, you bet, in my view. For example, consider the following press reactions to Joe Wilson’s outburst in Congress. While Wilson’s behavior was clearly inappropriate and he acknowledged it, the tone of the reaction against him is a reflection of this cultural divide. One came from Maureen Dowd in the NY Times which essentially attributes Wilson’s comment to race. The other, coming from ESPN’s Jeff Macgregor, compares Wilson’s comment to Serena Williams behavior in the US Open. Note the quotes below and the knuckleheaded (in my view) reasoning in these pieces. You will have to read the entire article to properly interpret these quotes in context. These are evidences of the cultural gaps that Steve references. These gaps exist and are far more pronounced than we may realize. They will become increasingly more pronounced in the years to come.
What does this have to do with us at St. Andrews? If after our 40 Days of Discernment, we conclude that we should leave TEC and even the diocese, what will our course of action be or as Francis Shaeffer said, “How Should We Then Live?”. That future state will simultaneously present tremendous opportunity and tremendous challenges or even threats. With the act of departure, I suggest that it will no longer be business as usual for us. As a whole, even though we are a very committed church, we will need to function at a much higher and even more fully devoted level than we are now. The cultural distinctions will become far more intense in the years to come. These are issues I continue to evaluate in my own walk as well.
Look up these articles and read them completely. Decide for yourself. They may seem like “outlier” perspectives but they are really quite routine. I believe they are examples of how the liberal media is foreshadowing future cultural change. This raises the bar for us as committed believers.
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Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber. (Maureen Dowd, “Boy, Oh Boy”, NY Times, 9/12/09)
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I mention this in regard to Williams, because for her outburst in the middle of a tennis match, a game, an entertainment in which nothing is at stake but her own success, people in my business and out of it are calling for very harsh penalties on behalf of temperance and politesse and etiquette.
When someone hits the right honorable Congressman Puddn’head Wilson with a fine and suspension for having lost his temper at work, I’ll grant you the absolute necessity of doing likewise to Williams. (Jeff Macgregor, “What has happened to civility”,ESPN.com, 9/13/09)
Good examples, Craig. When a society’s worldview becomes too individualistic, shared values diminish. It is then easy to claim moral equivalence for unrelated issues. It seems to boil down to a societal view that one has to be perfect in order to point out another’s bad behavior. I’m afraid we have become a nation of toddlers. The steady drumbeat of, “Well You are even worse than me!” demonstrate the disintegration that may have already reached critical mass.
My comment would be that we as a country and that churches in general have faced this sort of thing before and come through OK, but we do need to focus on the Main Thing. In a way, Joe Wilson’s major failing was not in giving way to his emotions, unintentionally sparking a racial skirmish or firing a salvo in obstructionist politics, but in offending God and Christ who encourages us to build one another up. That his actions may have sparked acting out along the lines of “Well, you are clearly worse than me,” (the above journalists)”You wronged me and I deserve more respect than that,” (Serena Williams) or “You don’t deserve this award,” (Kanye West) are hardly surprising fruits of succumbing to the seduction of the Evil One. This is in no way a judgement of poor Joe; rather an observation of our collective frailty.
How to apply this to our current denominational dilemma? Discernment and the knowledge required to make that discernment is key. But also key is retaining God’s admonition to love, support and build one another up rather than seek ammunition with which to judge others. From recent personal experience I know how tempting it is for me to move from discernment to judgement to castigation. As someone pointed out to me recently, while one can seek to argue rightness, there is only One who is granted the authority of righteousness. Perhaps the biggest lesson for me lately, and a cautionary tale in my own looking to the cross as we move forward.
Saying that the “emperor has no clothes”, is exactly what Joe Wilson meant. He has apologized to the President,and I think he should apologize to the Congress, but ONLY for “upsetting the decorum of the August house”. (which is of course a joke, considering the behavior of the other side), but it would indeed draw some attention to everyone’s behavior.
There comes a time when one has to stand up and speak truth. Of course there are other ways, and times to do it, but it was the truth!
Grandmother
Slightly off-topic, but perhaps of interest:
Here’s an article about a departing parish in Florida titled “First Southwest Florida Episcopal Parish Leaves TEC.”
By the way, I do think this country is in severe decline as well.