someone<\/em>, especially someone who disagrees with us, as the root cause for all our problems.<\/p>\nThis is dangerous, because then one is tempted to treat this group the way one treats a weed.<\/p>\n
One thing I have learned: big cultural problems have many causes. For example, many Americans do not have access to good quality health care and overall our health care is too expensive? Why?<\/p>\n
If you can answer that question with a three minute You-Tube, then you have blown it.<\/p>\n
Christians face this temptation and we must learn to resist it. Many of us see American cultural rot being exposed lately, so it is tempting to look for easy enemies and attack them. If there is some truth to the analysis, complex problems have many causes, then the analysis will be persuasive. You can start an entire movement around such labeling, ministries are formed, money is raised.<\/p>\n
A shallow sort of academic discovers a movement (\u201cthe Austrian school!\u201d the \u201crevivalism\u201d), learns about that movement, and then makes it\u00a0very effective and the cause of almost all our woes.<\/em> At the start of this century, Christians went after postmodernism as the cause of our problems.<\/p>\nI was dubious then and more dubious now.<\/p>\n
The problem doesn\u2019t go away and in fact may get worse. Why? We are (at best) attacking\u00a0a<\/em> root cause and at worst demonizing a group of people that may be as much victims as are we. For example, the rise of the religiously unaffiliated, assuming it is still a \u201cthing\u201d (data is mixed), has gotten a great deal of attention. Since generalizations about the religious decisions of millions of individuals are going to\u00a0always be dodgy,\u00a0<\/em>quick and facile conclusions will be worse.<\/p>\nConservatives might be too quick to blame theological liberalism.<\/p>\n
Liberals attack the \u201creligious right.\u201d<\/p>\n
One good way of seeing how empty such analysis can be is to ask to define terms. What is \u201ctheological liberalism?\u201d What is the \u201creligious right?\u201d Try this out out on a Jerry Falwell Jr. on the right or a Franky Schaeffer on the left and one generally finds a mess. Often it is: people I don\u2019t like doing things that I disapprove of who can now be hit with this particular stick.<\/p>\n
The categories become so broad that \u201creligious right\u201d or \u201ctheological liberalism\u201d loses any meaning beyond \u201cthe Christians I don\u2019t like.\u201d\u00a0Now it seems probable to me that confusion of Americanism with Christianity and<\/em> a loss of theological convictions might both be causes of the rise of the nones. Maybe.<\/p>\nResearch continues.<\/p>\n
Until we can be sure, please note that confusing Americanism with Christianity is bad even if it has not led to the rise of the non-religious and that theological apostasy is no better than any other betrayal!<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, lumping large groups of people together with ill defined categories means missing out on valuable ideas and possible allies. Any idea that conveniently dispenses with all our foes as the source of our woe should be suspect! It is too easy to kid ourselves.<\/p>\n
People, even more than events, are complicated. They hardly ever fit into a simple category. My friends who voted for Trump have all kinds of reasons for doing so. Those of us who could not also have many reasons.<\/p>\n
We must be careful. Hatred can be a hidden motive that few of us wish to find!<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An important job for thinkers is to look for the root cause of cultural problems. If only we could find\u00a0why\u00a0we had this problem, got to the very bottom of the cultural weed, then we could not only pull it out, but make sure it did not return. That can be good, but it always is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1007,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"yoast_head":"\n
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