The over/under

So I'm re-reading an old favorite, George Orwell's essay "Charles Dickens," and I'm struck by how it compares to another old favorite, Todd Snider's "Conservative Christian, right-wing Republican, straight, white American males."

Here's the passage from Orwell that caught my attention:

Where [Dickens] is Christian is in his quasi-instinctive siding with the oppressed against the oppressors. As a matter of course he is on the side of the underdog, always and everywhere. To carry this to its logical conclusion one has got to change sides when the underdog becomes an upperdog, and in fact Dickens does tend to do so. He loathes the Catholic Church, for instance, but as soon as the Catholics are persecuted (Barnaby Rudge) he is on their side. He loathes the aristocratic class even more, but as soon as they are really overthrown (the revolutionary chapters in A Tale of Two Cities) his sympathies swing round. Whenever he departs from this emotional attitude he goes astray.

This is an accurate assessment of Dickens' sympathies, and I think Orwell is right about the religious impulse at work in them. Dickens' "quasi-instinctive siding with the oppressed against the oppressors" was closely tied to his informal but integral Christian faith. Neither Dickens nor Orwell thought it strange to suggest that being "on the side of the underdog, always and everywhere" is essentially congruent with Christianity.

In 2007, in the United States, this does seem strange. Here and now, the word "Christian" conjures up many connotations and implications, but an instinctive "siding with the oppressed against the oppressors" is not one of them.

In this time and place, that word is far likelier to imply something like the playful litany of stereotypes that Todd Snider sings about:

Conservative Christian, right-wing Republican
?Straight white American males
?Gay-bashing, black-fearing
?War-fighting, tree-killing
?Regional leaders of sales
?Frat-housing, keg-tapping
?Shirt-tucking, back-slapping
?Haters of hippies like me
?Tree-hugging, peace-loving
?Pot-smoking, porn-watching
?Lazy-ass hippies like me

Snider's satire is over-the-top, but his caricatures are recognizable. Like a good political cartoonist, he exaggerates the real features of real people, so even though he's not aiming for realism, he produces a more realistic portrait of our cultural divide than you'll find in the pop-sociology of someone like David Brooks.

The sketch Snider presents is the opposite of the picture drawn by Orwell and Dickens. In his song, the dominant characteristic of these people is their quasi-instinctive siding with the oppressors against the oppressed. He refers to them as "Rush-loving," meaning Rush Limbaugh. That's not a caricature or an exaggeration — they really do love Rush Limbaugh, a man who is, always and everywhere, standing on the neck of the underdog.

So why do we get such contradictory pictures of "Christianity" from Orwell and Snider? Partly, I suppose, it's a matter of two people writing in different times and different places. But I also think they're using the same adjective — Christian — in two very different ways. Orwell is speaking normatively — he is referring to the "sympathies" that Christians ought to display based on their own teachings and scriptures. Snider is speaking descriptively — here is what many prominently visible people who call themselves Christians actually look like, regardless of whether this is compatible with what they purportedly believe.

"Christian" is, it seems, another ambiguous adjective. Like "American" or "Un-American" it is interchangeably normative and descriptive, and the different senses of the word can have opposite meanings, thus causing much confusion and contention.

Taking both statements above descriptively, which of the two seems more accurate to you — Orwell's or Snider's — particularly with regard to American evangelicals?

My sense is that American evangelicals wouldn't care for Snider's goofy satire. I would say they might have legitimate reason to reject it, except that they wouldn't much like Orwell's description either. "Siding with the oppressed" would probably strike most evangelicals as vaguely Communistic. So where does that leave them?

I suppose if you really want to know where a group of people stands with regard to the underdogs, then the best way to find out is to ask the underdogs.